Transcripts
1. Introduction: I love to create things. I love to make all the things in my head come to life. My name is Laci Jordan. I'm a multidisciplinary artist and illustrator, and today, I'm going to take you through a simple process of finding your style with digital illustration. I would describe my style as fine, bold, unapologetic, in your face, lots of style, fearless. It's not a one-day process to find your own style, it's something that you're always doing and discovering and is more of a process thing. Picking up a pencil or picking up a tablet and say, "Hey, I have this style and now I'm lit." It doesn't work like this. So I hope that this class at least eases the notion that you have to have it all figured out and really just gives aspiring creatives or people who are already creating the liberty and the freedom to this, do what they want to without any boundaries. For the project, I have five easy steps. I'm going to take you through inspiration and research. Then we're going to dive in, get into creating a piece, we're adding details, we're adding texture, dimension. Color is a big piece of it, and then I'll tell you how to share it all. So excited take you through my crazy, all-over-the-place process. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you take away at least one thing that mean I did my job as a teacher. So let's get into it.
2. The Importance of Creating: Take out time to create for yourself, so you can figure out who you are as an artist. It's so impactful. It's important to be creative. One, because you're identifying yourself and that's why we're here. Two, understanding who you are as a creative and being in tune with the type of work that you want to create. So you have to be constantly creating and exploring, not only creativity, but exploring within yourself to see what is it that I want to create. How do I get to that point where I know exactly what I do want to do and what I don't want to do. So, for me, it's always exploring. You don't know what you want to do until you explore it. You constantly have to be creating, and that sounds like a lot of pressure, but it doesn't have to be something where you're always on a hamster wheel creating, but being in that mind frame where you're doing things for yourself. That's something that I couldn't express more, is to create for yourself. I never could really draw in the way that I saw my different colleagues or my peers drawing, so just having a blank slate was very intimidating. Where do I start, what if my lines are crooked, I just don't know what to do. So one of the best things for me was to start tracing. It is funny. You go through a lot of things you do as a child, and as a child, you're always coloring or you're tracing something. So I went back to that myth that's to help jumpstart my creativity in drawing, and in return, it helped me learn how to draw. It helped me learn how to draw faces or hands, or just figure out how I want my style to be developed on the technical end. A lot of artists are in their own heads, and we overthink a lot. I have like my address that I live in, then my other address is just located here because I'm always just stuck and intimidated by so many things. But, cliche, you just have to start. That is the hardest part, and the main keys are to start and to practice. That's literally it. Practice everyday but there is a big intimidation factor of, "Am I good enough to do this? How do I do it? How long is it going to take me to get good?" It's a lot of pressure that just lives inside of you, and I also think that creating helps relieve that. Once you start, you just know. A lot of the pressure was more up here versus actually doing it. So throughout my career, I've done I think three or four challenges during Black History Month. I'm black, so that's something that's important to me, and I wanted to just put out facts in a way that we're really, really cool, whether it's illustrations of different people, or maybe a digital collage, and then more recently, I did a challenge of creating a single cover a day because I love music. I love looking at different album covers and single covers, and I really just wanted to say you explore what that meant in my voice. So it was the combination of doing the challenge, a, putting it out there, b, and then c, making it personal. For today, I want to take you through a project that is very similar to one of my 30-day challenges. We're going to create a self-portrait that, in return, is going to help you discover your own style and creativity through the process. This will be a great project to help you gain your momentum in creating. It will also help you get into the vibe of learning how to create, learning how to create your own style, and then also sharing your project. At the end, I will be sharing a few prompts that will hopefully jump-start your own 30-day challenges, so you can get out there and constantly create and share with your community. For today, we have five simple steps that are going to help you jump off your creative career and help you develop this self-portraits. Number one, inspiration and research. We're going to dive in to what my process is by looking through different books, looking through different things on the Internet, different artists to cultivate the idea of how to find your own style. Once we're done finding the inspiration, we're going to take it into Illustrator, and I'm going to introduce you to a very simple method that we all know and love, which is tracing. So essentially, you'll be tracing your own self-portrait in order to play and experiment, and discover your style without any boundaries of actually creating a piece from scratch. Once we have the illustration at a good place where we have all the shapes outlining, you have a skeleton of how you want it to look, we'll take it to the next step of adding dimension, adding a different little flavor to it, adding detail, and really making it yours. So the most fun part, my favorite part is color. I'll take you through a couple of different ways that you can add color, ways you can think about color, and just add that little bit of spice to your piece. So for step five, once we're done with color, we'll jump into Photoshop, and I'll show you how to add my signature texture, and I'll also take you through a couple of resources to add any of the textures that you would want to. It will give your piece a little bit more depth and take it to the next level. So last but not least, because I want you to share this, I'm going to give you my tips on putting your work out there. It's so crucial that you do this because if you don't put it out there, no one knows you exist, so you'll get no jobs. We have to put the work out there, and then from there, I'll give you a couple of prompts on how to keep creating and jump-start the method that I have of constantly creating everyday. So now that I've given you the lay of the land, let's jump into it and get started.
3. Finding Inspiration in Books: Art is what you make it, and it doesn't have to be intimidating. I'm going to give you a couple of techniques that I use, a few resources, and I'll help you figure out what your inspiration is, in return, helping finding yourself. Looking for inspiration is super important because it helps you figure out what people have done, either before you or around you. It gives you ideas of what can be done. That's something that's been very impactful in my career. Looking at illustration and beyond, just as an artist, seeing what people are doing, and knowing that I'm capable of doing that. It gives you the first inclination of, what do I really want to do? What styles am I drawn to? Seeking inspiration helps out with the idea of, or the pressure really, of starting from a blank canvas. Because you're seeing how other artists have taken their ideas and flushed them out to create something, and you can identify with that. So when you're looking for your style, it's very good to search through different resources and see like, "Okay. This is the style that I like, gravitate to it and figure out how you can make it your own." I look everywhere for inspiration. Honestly, a big piece is the world around you. But one of my main sources of inspiration is books. Yes, books. Physical books, I go into the library, it's something that we don't talk about or do more of, myself included. I'm doing it more and more, as I just grow wiser in my career. But one of my main source of inspiration is books which we'll dive into. As you're flipping through books, and even other things that we'll discuss, pay attention to what you like. That's the main key. If you're flipping and you're like, "Okay. I actually like more complicated illustrations," then take a note of that. Take a note of what your eye naturally gravitates to. Don't try to make it gravitate to something that it's not. Go with your instinct. Use your gut. This is definitely more new age. We're in digital, which is called new simplicity, obvious reasons. So again, going back to that simple flat shape, that also still gives you a message. So this is 1, 2, 3 different squares. They create a roller dice, and it just looks very, very dynamic. Super simple, flat shapes, still gives a message. So this is something that, as I started to look through books, I just identify with. I love geometry, I love lines, I love things that make you look just a little bit closer. For instance, this is a really good example of that. With shapes, they intertwine with one another, and then also have a lot of color. So go back, learn your history. Again, in school, I did not do it, so I totally understand. But you really have more of appreciation for it once you go back as an adult, and you're actually more interested in what they were trying to teach you back in a day that you didn't want to listen to. So art history, my number one. This is one of my favorite books, and I can give it the credit of what really helped me hone in on my style. During my time at Disney, I was working on a bunch of crazy projects. But a lot of them were in tune with the OG Disney art, so I was given a book on Disney poster art that totally changed my life. Cheesy, I know, but I want to dive into it and show the correlation between what I saw here, and what my work ended up being like. I remember seeing this and being totally mind-blown. It breaks down how they built the monorail system poster. As you can see, this is a color exercise, but it's taking you through the different shapes. So you see how it's super simple, and it sort of built up to this at the end. When I saw it, I was like, "Wow, simple shapes." So again, very round structural elements that ended up just being additions and additions and additions to the ending result. So this is the first thing where I looked at it and I was like, "Okay. These are simple shapes that they've constructed, and they've used color in a way that gives you a little bit of more dimension than you would think." From finding the Disney book, I was introduced to an artist named [inaudible] , which, if you know me, I'm obsessed. He creates these super cool worlds, which is something that I want to get into more with my work, is creating worlds but you see all the use of color. Again, I'll go back to using simple shapes. Everything that he does, is very simple and clean in nature, which I would just like to point out. He paints this stuff, which is out of this world, because it looks digital. But again, using very different shapes, simple shapes. But he's creating these worlds that suck you in, and make you want to be a part of them. They also remind me of The Jetsons, and I'm still looking for their future. With very, very cool aesthetics, and also color. This is a situation where I was like, okay, he plays with color very well, and if you can see, monochromatic stuff too. It's not even a lot of different shapes in this piece, but the way he uses them, just is very dynamic and it brings you into the piece. It doesn't take a lot to do things that are very impactful, and to do things that make you feel like you're telling a story, because there's also a big piece of it. You want to create, and you want to find your own style, but then you also want to tell a story, even if it's your story. So I've given you a few of my favorite resources. When it comes to books, I highly recommend going to your public library, usually free, checking out books, spending in time and figuring out what is relevant to you. Another thing to note is, while looking at your art history books, you could also get inspiration and gravitate towards things that may not necessarily be in your distinct style, but you pick up different things from it. This is a good example, going back to the modern ages and futurism. I love how everything is super distorted, and they have weird crazy shapes. So I tend to use that a lot in my work. Especially, if I'm doing general graphic design projects, and I'm doing layout treatments, you will always see crazy letters and shapes all over the place, and it goes back to looking at things like futurism, or these they were creating in the Dada period. So I recommend really going back. Of course, finding the art history book that works for you. Because this is super simple, it gives you a good spend of what they were doing back in a day until now, and they give you a little blurb on the history. It's not a super deep dive into the 1800's, it's not super boring. So figure out what works for you, figure out the books that you like. If you want to do that deep dive back into the 18, whatevers, feel free. But I recommend diving in, indulging, and really having fun with the different art styles. Now that we've done the old-school way, I'm going to take you to the digital way, and dive into the Internet, and look into what some of my resources to finding inspiration aren't there.
4. Finding Inspiration Online: So we talked about the old-school way of finding inspiration, looking at books, going to your public library. But now, it's time to jump into more of the digital way of how I find inspiration. So my sites vary from Pinterest, to Instagram, Dribble, Behance, if you name it, I've probably been on Tumblr, still a good one. I want to take you through a few ways I seek inspiration, but more so on Pinterest, and just my method of creating Pinterest boards, how I identify with them, and then also how I use them within my work. So this is my homepage, as you can already tell, I love color. This just shows you how I here ray and come up with different things, so this front piece is more so was front-facing. So if you go to my Pinterest, you'll be able to see all these different boards, which range from design, to art direction, places, fashion, spaces, textures, anything that I could potentially be inspired by, I have it on this Pinterest board. Then, you get down to the juice, which is all of my secret boards. As you see, lots and lots of projects from photo shoots, to product, wedding website. If you've worked with me, I have a secret Pinterest board with your name on it, deep in archive. So this just gives you an idea of how much I actually research, and how much I dive in when it comes to finding the inspiration behind or for a certain projects. So I want to give you a couple of examples of how I created a board and how it translated into an actual project. So for Black History Month this year, I decided to do a single cover a day project, where I created a piece of artwork for just singles that I like, that range from different genres from old-schools to more modern day music. So this board gives you a deep dive of the inspiration behind some of those pieces. So for instance, this one super wavy, super 70s, I wanted it to feel outstanding, since that was the cover that I was also looking at. I wanted it to feel like the song, but then, also just give you the same vibe of the song. So again, you see these differing 70s motifs. Then, you see the final piece, which basically I took the idea of using those different motifs and also the color palette. The color palette feels very 70s but also very nostalgic unlike vintage. It feels like this could be something that is printed out on vinyl that you see like as you're going to tease out. When you to go home for quick-out. That gives you a great example of creating a board, painting inspiration, and then tying it into the final piece. So it gives you like a recap. From looking at images like this one, I was able to basically take it and pool the different elements from it to create the color palette for this piece, which again, direct inspiration and figuring out how to make it your own when you find it. Another just quick tip is, if you're struggling with learning how to search in Pinterest because that's the thing, think about the words that you want to portray, which we'll talk about wording and how to identify what you like. But if you're doing a 70s type of vibe, then go on Pinterest and look for 70s textiles, because you can see what people were wearing, the different patterns of the area. Also, if you click on an image on Pinterest, and you want to see similar ones, just scroll down. So many people don't know that, which is interesting. That's really how I found other things. So if I find it's really cool image and I'm like, "I want more of it." Literally, scroll down. You'll find more of it, and it'll take you down a crazy rabbit hole of finding all these different forms and inspiration so that you have a bigger bucket to go through and figure out, okay, what is it that I like about this? So as I mentioned, I create Pinterest boards for literally everything. This project is no exception. So I want to show you the Pinterest board that I created and take you through my thinking process. I literally pinned anything that I like, that could pertain to this project. That's why I love this exercise so much is because is very low maintenance, is very more freeing, and I just want you to pin things that remind you of whatever you're trying to portray, that doesn't have to be pins of illustrations. It could be architecture, it could be interior design, it can literally be anything that you see that just makes you be like, "I like this portrait or this picture a lot." That's what I want you to pin. So if you look at mine, you see, one, a lot of color which is very prominent, the Rama work. You see lots of oranges, lots of blues, and that's one thing to keep in mind is that, when you create a Pinterest board, one of the whole point is for you to look at it and analyze what is common about it, like what are the different things that you're repeating, what are the different things that you're drawn to, because more than likely if you see it more than once, that means that you're into it and there's something about it that just makes you tick, you may have just never identified with that beforehand. So for me, I'm not even like a woman that wears a lot of pink or like super into pink, but for some reason in my work I love seeing pink. So you notice a lot of pinks, a lot of oranges, a lot of blues. You see a lot of women, which is represented in my work. I love showing women, especially women of color. You see a lot of different attitude, lots of different facial structures, lots of different ways of life in this board. You develop in a self portrait, and that's a very just like close thing to do because it's you. But one thing that I did in this board was, I pinned images that had a certain attitude. Think about what you want to portray in your piece, as well as illustration styles, color type, whatever that is. Assignment, a.k.a, adult homework, as I like to call it. I'm going to have you create a Pinterest board of your own for this project and pin at least 50 to 100 images of anything you want that you feel like will really help you hone in on this. So one is, pinning different illustrations, so making you find your illustration style. Two, pinning things that you can take a step back from and then realize the commonalities of it. So the idea is when you're done, you'll go through and scroll in and say, "Hey! I see a lot of similarities and colors, a lot of similarities in different moods, different vibes, different textures." I want you to go crazy with this project, do not hold back, pin any and everything from architecture, to foods, to illustration, whatever it is, pin it. So one big piece about inspiration besides the books and looking on the Internet, is to just be inspired by you in your everyday life. It's so many pieces that I have, that are really just inspired by what I love. Whether it's the music black history challenge, that was a combination of my love for music and love for people of color. Or if it's just something that you're into, you have a certain artist that you like or you like which she emulates, or he emulates. Capture that in your work. I've mentioned before that my work is very unapologetic and that goes to different people that are like on the outside whether it is like a Rihanna or someone who just catches the edgy spirits. So I'm very much inspired by things that just drive me. One thing to note is that, you have to get out into the world to be inspired. It's so good to read books and it's so good to be on the Internet, but you have to go live your life, so you can be inspired by things that come natural to you. All right. So now, you're off to create your own Pinterest board, pin any and everything, have fun, that's the most important. Be free and figure out the commonalities, figure out what you like and try to identify why you like it. All right. So for the next step, we will select our photo for the self-portrait and we'll start tracing.
5. Setting Up in Adobe Illustrator: We've sourced our inspiration, we've made our Pinterest board, and now it's time to select our photo that we're going to use as the foundation for our illustration. So there aren't any rules in choosing a photo necessarily. All that I ask that you choose something that properly represent you, and think about the Pinterest board and also the words that you wrote down. So their photo should basically be encompass of all of those things whether you wrote, bold, or shy, or energetic, or whatever it is, shot up, select the photo that shows all of the things that you put into your Pinterest board, and also how you want to represent yourself. Keep in mind that this is super loose, you do not have to stick to the photograph to a T, and you'll see it as I do that I change a lot of elements, I switch out things, is all your interpretation, and is also you can discover your style while using yourself as your own muse. So select something fine. Also think about details in the photos, so maybe if you have a core necklace that you really want to illustrate, or if you're wearing a hat, whatever those elements are, try to think of what their final product would be, and use their angular selection process. But also know that even if it isn't a level of detail that you want in a photo, you can also add it yourself because again, we're being loose here, you can choose what you want, so let's jump in. Going back to the Pinterest exercise, I love photos that are more like filling up the frame, more up-close. I love photos that have attitude as you can see I'm giving a little side eye. So we have the photo, select it, and now it's time to jump into Illustrator. Now, once you're in Illustrator, there aren't too many restrictions on the file setup. So since this is something that I want you to share, I recommend doing it in either a square or like a landscape, basically shareable for Instagram, Pinterest, wherever you plan to put it, maybe 1,080 by 1,080 that's standard squarer size and that's in pixels. But again, you do not have to follow those rules when it comes to size, go off your photos, you may have a crazy proportion of photo that I don't know about. So I want you to do what works best for you, but for Instagram or for sharing, 1,080 by 1,080. I also recommend that since this will be for web, to make sure you're designing in RGB, but if you do plain to print this, CMYK would be your friend, that's basically like web versus print, and from there you can just go ahead and get started.
6. Tracing Your Photo: I have my art board here. First things first, save your file because the worst thing is when you do a bunch of work and then your computer crashes or something weird happens and it's gone. So save it wherever you want to. I love the saving on a desktop just because it's easy to find it, and I'm going to name this SkillshareLJ for Laci. Awesome. So at this point, you're in a blank slate. Bring in your photo which you can drag drop super easy. Or if you want to, you can go to File and Place, and once you select Place, it just takes you to wherever your photo is desktop, documents, wherever you keep it. So once you have your photo in, let's just make this a little bit bigger because remember you're tracing, so you need it to be as big as possible, and another thing to remember is, if you're keeping it in a square, no matter what shape your document is, just want to make it as big as possible, or basically fill it up the way you want us to fill up the art board. So for me, again, I like portraits. I like things that fill up the space. So I want mine to be as big as the final piece would be right in a duration. So layers. Now, this is not a class on technique. I have lots of classes that I can refer you to on Skillshare that are amazing for that. But I do want to show you a little bit about layers. I do not use layers properly as I shoot in Illustrator. I do that in Photoshop, but I do think that in Illustrator, especially for this exercise in particular, it's good to at least create a couple of layers because since you are tracing a photo, you want to keep that photo as the background element. As we go through the exercise, you will see me creating different elements and moving things backwards and frontwards, and it's just a lot easier once you already have that photo lot as a background layer. So we're going to go down here to layers, and as you see, I created a new one on top of here. So this one, I'm just going to say BG. So that is the background, and I'm going to lock it so it will stay there. So any time you need to move it, just hit this lock button. I'm going to draw everything here, which we're going to name this art. So you have your background photo here, and you create your art here. I'm going to be using the pen tool and also the pencil tool. I go back and forth between the two. There are going to be some technique geeks that are going to literally cringe in my process. I'm sorry. I just get it done. All right. So I like to zoom all the way in to the photo. So one of my biggest things that I will say to pay attention to or even to do when you start tracing is to create the foundation of the photo first. So I'm thinking more of big shapes. So my BA, there 'll be one shape going through in creating the neck layer, the outside of the jacket and the torso and then going back in and diving into more of the details element. So we'll dive in now and start creating those shapes. So for this exercise, I'm going to be using the pen tool and the pencil tool to go and create these outlines of the different shapes, which with the pen tool, I'm basically creating one anchor point tying it to another and then manipulating the shape to curves or maybe to straight lines. With the pencil tool, I'm literally just going through and tracing. So very, very simple process using the pencil, using the pen just to create those anchor points and to create a solid outline. So one thing to remember, it does not have to be exactly like the photo. As you see me drawing, I'm not hitting every area of my face directly. I might cut off a couple of corners or curve things that are really more angular. It's really your interpretation, and it does not have to be exact. I cannot stress that enough. It does not have to be exact. You would drive yourself of the wall trying to make it exactly like your photo. So let's jump in with the pen tool. If you like using keystrokes, just type the letter P. I'm not that savvy with key strokes, but I know a few. So going in with the pen tool, connecting two points, and creating this angular motion. For more longer curves, I believe I use the pen tool more often versus the pencil tool. If you notice, this is a very smooth element right here, but it looks like it's a dip that it's more cut in versus smooth. So you can click on this anchor point, and you see this little circle guide, pull him out, and it just moves it out. So it's not so much of the dip. So at this point, we have the basic face shape done, connected to those two anchor points. We bring this went out a little bit. So now, you want to go in, and like I mentioned before, do those main areas. So we're going to jump into the hair, and like I said, I didn't necessarily want it braids because they were a little dusty. So creating this part which is super simple, again, basic shapes doing a rectangle. The part should be the same color as the skin because it's just more realistic. Again, this is your illustration. You could do what you want. I want you to be flexible and play with things, but some stuff just makes sense. Your part has to be the same as skin color. So I'm going to bring that bad boy in. Let's just bring into full color. So now you have your part in your face. So let's dive and say here, mission as before, worry about the big shapes first. Go in and do the intricate stuff later. I also like to do the stuff. This is more fun. So I'm going to use the pencil tool, just so I have that free hand. All right. So I don't know if I mentioned this already at this point, but using the arrange tool is very the crucial in this project. So going to Object, Arrange, and then to bring to back or bring to frame depending on what you're doing. For this case, with the hair, you didn't want a slab of hair just right there. You wanted to bring it to back, which is why we locked the backgrounds so you're able to do that. So send to back, boom, now we want to do this part, which again using the pencil tool, sometimes I nail it on the first try with bigger, wavier things, sometimes I don't. Then that's when I do the bottom part first. So let's just try it. All right. So you've got your pony, and of course, your neck will end up hiding this little piece that's hanging off. Now let's jump into the facial features. Going back to your Pinterest board and just your general likes, I love eyebrows. I think eyebrows make a face. That's one big thing that I like. So in all of my illustrations, usually they have really, really good brows if you've ever noticed this. So tracing a brow is super simple. I want an arch because I like good brows. So lets make another anchor point, bring in this guy here. So I don't want my brows to be this big because I would just look a fool. Going to hit this one, shift C is what I've been using to bring that curve element we use in the pen tool. So give my brow a little. So going through with the lips, and I would probably sound like a broken record, but it's about getting the shapes, not getting it perfect. That's something I just want to key. Key bite busting you over here with. Don't try to make it perfect. We have time for that, and it's also for you to develop your style because, like I mentioned, I have a thing with eyebrows. That is something that is now in my style. You have to just work on figuring out what those elements are and what are those little key things that people can just expect from your work. So I'm going to go in with the eyes. Eyes and hands are super hard in my opinion. There are many ways you can draw eyes from not having the whites in your eyes to keeping that eye all one shape to what it feels more cartoonish. You can add different elements like eyelashes or the upper eye slit, totally up to you. I found that it's easier to create the impression of an eye if you add as many elements as possible in a simplistic way, if that makes sense. Go through, create the big sections of the shapes and just like your overall body. Don't worry too much about detail. Don't worry about color, and don't worry about having all the anchor points correct. This is just about getting the framework. So think of it as you were sketching. You have the first outline sketch. This is your first outline sketch. Then you go in and add the different elements and say like, "Hey, maybe you want her to have eyelashes," or when you draw the nose, you want to have a nose ring. Worry about all this stuff later, get the main elements down, and they will go to the next step.
7. Adding Dimension: I went ahead and created the general outline of each shape which, like I said before, includes the main pieces like the head, your neck, whatever outerwear you have. Sort of going in and going ahead and drawing the eyes, the nose, at the bare minimum. Eventually, we'll go and add details to these different things. But right now, we're going to focus on dimension and creating shadows. What I mean by that is, as you see now, my head and my neck blend into one another and it's like no neck situation. We want to create a shadow that creates the actual chin. So you can see that like, "Oh, okay. I have a neck." It exists. Then, also different areas like bringing in the jacket element. So showing a little bit of dimension that shows the jacket has sleeves and other elements. Before we jump into Illustrator, I want to show you super quick tip that I have learned from just locating shadows. So let's jump into Photoshop, go to Window Adjustments and black and white. So you see this little icon, one side white, one side black or field boom black and white photo. So if you play with the reds and yellows, which are basically like the skin tones, and it's different depending on which photo you choose. Feel free to play with all these different sliders, they'll tell you what you want to know. So I want to play with the red one. As you see, you see the shadows coming out and going back in via contrasts. But essentially, the shadow with my neck and my chin, you see that that's there. It gives you a little overlap showing that I have a little dimension, my chest is in the jacket, so it shows you that it's tucked away. Also, yellows are also a good one. It's more of like a body shadows. So right here on my torso, you can tell there is a little bit of shadow again caused by the jacket. So super simple exercise, you're really just going in and playing around to see where the shadows land on you and where they're lifted. Then when you go back in Illustrator, you can look at that as a guide and say, okay, if you have a little chisel cheekbone, maybe it's a shadow that lands there. So now, back in Illustrator. So the obvious thing is, like I said, it does look as though I have a neck. So a lot of the times, even before I get to creating dimension in Illustrator, this just annoys me like I just hate how it looks. So I usually just go in and change the color because I just need to see that I have a neck, it's a weird. I don't know peppy, and it helps you define where to put that shadow because before, you're like you don't know where your chin in's and your neck began. So if it's easier to change their color, it doesn't matter what color, we haven't gotten there yet, and it helps you define what that looks like. So don't forget to stick with your photo even though you have this part completed where you mostly have the skeleton there, hit those outlines. Like I mentioned before, I always go back to the outlines because I need to see what's going on in the photo. It also helps you figure out going back to the Photoshop trick where's defined. So right here is an obvious shadow. I'm going to just create a simple shape right here that defines this shadow. So in a pencil tool because I liked to have the free flow going straight up. Now, I also want to connect this to my jaw line because again, you're following shadow. So you had this shadow that comes from up from your chest underneath your chin. You want to get used to creating these different elements. So right now, it's like super ugly in dark. We'll fix that later, just pop the behind. So now, you have the shadow dropping down, and let's close this just like you see here. Again, this is why I use the Arrange tool because like a puzzle piece, if you bring one element in front, you have to push the other element behind and you'll totally get a grasp edit as you keep going. So now, I have some sort of shadow. We'll do the coloring later but I'm just going to go ahead and make this a couple of shades darker than the neck. So it feels more like it's a part of the skin tone. As we go in and finalize the details, you're fine tune how the shadow lands. Because right now, it's showing that I have a chin but I may want to change this just so it isn't as elongated on my neck. So right now, you have a neck and a chin, other areas going back to the Photoshop exercise. We notice that there is a shadow that's on abdomen. We're going to refer back to the Photoshop trick. As you see, the shadow is highlighting right around this area. So you going to pretty much put the shadow anywhere you want, but it lands on this crease. But honestly, unlike when the shadow comes from the opposite end, which if you use the yellows which is why I say play with the sliders so you can see where shadows come in and out from different directions. I want my shadow to come from this way. Again, Pencil tool. Super simple I just love having that control and as the light, it flows a lot easier when you're not using the pen tool. So bringing this back again. Sometimes, when you bringing things back, you also have to move other elements. So now, is like, okay boom. So another element also goes into using shadow and dimension, but you just want to add in those details. One thing is, I have on a sports bra in this photo, and if you go back to the original photo, you have to show the cleavage. That's why we're here, so here we go. Super simple line just to confirm that this is there. Yeah. You use the same colors. Don't harp on it. We're going to fix it later. But that's such an easy example just to show that there is separation there. Separation in the body. Okay. So at this point, we got a neck, got a little cleavage, we have abs. Now, the face. Now, the face is one of the hardest areas to create shadow. One reason why is because is just, we're complicated creatures and our facial structures are very different. Another reason is why, like I mentioned before, is just hard to figure out where the light comes in referring back to the Photoshop file. It looks as though I have like a little chisel chin coming in like a contour line. So I know there's one place where I actually want to create shadow, I'm just showing that again like through here. Feel free to go back to outline mode. Just so you can see. What in the world is going on? At this point, we have a lot of different outlines. All right. So like I said, I have a shadow that's coming in from this side, so I want to create a little shadow. I can go on back to the pencil tool because it's so easy to use. So I'm giving myself the same contour line as we follow into Photoshop file, and you can see it right here because I actually had I think a contour and my makeup. So you can see how it goes at an angle down my face. Now, I want to switch over to the pen tool, because again, come for those curvier lines is a lot better. These lines might be a little messy when I go in to really frame my face, but we're going to tidy all that up. Okay. Shadow, just I drop a color, doesn't have to be too particular. Actually, let me do a darker color. So for shadows, you can either do a darker color or a lighter color. I think for this, I'll probably do a darker color and play with the opacity a little bit just so it isn't as harsh. But once we have the colors situated, we can figure that out. So I'm just going to go in and just fix these wonky lines just a little bit because they will book the crap out of me. All right. Let's bring everything else back. Okay. Boom. So you can say oh I have some shadow there and all of these colors I like absolutely crazy. But let's create another one. Again, thinking about this, that shadowed is sort of hits my face from the opposite side. Following this shadow that comes on this side. So for this shadow in particular because we do have so many elements and so many things to turn to outline mode. There are certain times where I'm like. Okay. I just need to draw this on top of the shape, especially for this one because there's so many curves. For your shadow, you essentially want your shadows of follow the curves. So I'm going to actually zoom in just a little bit, and I'm going to lock my face. So that's command to just because I don't want it to move and I don't want any anchor points to connect to my face as I'm creating a shadow, because it'll just turn into like one big glob. So boom. Now, we have shadows within the face, shadows within the neck, recreating dimension in certain areas where we'd naturally exist. Now, I'm going to go through adding a couple of other levels of dimension, just thinking about like where the jacket lays and your sleeves different elements which cannot press this enough. It's totally up to you of what you do when it comes to dimension, and maybe you want the jacket to be all flat, and you don't want any dimension showing where the sleeves are. I'm going to jump in and do that, and then we'll dive into detail.
8. Adding Details: The detail part is one of the funniest parts because that's where you're really adding your personality in those levels of details. So whether it's a nose ring, some type a hair tie, a hat, different things that make you you and also just different things that you can do to find your style, because that's the whole point. So let's add in this nose ring. So pencil tool. Super easy. I'm just going to create a line, little arch. Again, think about those things that jump out to your personality and it doesn't even have to be anything that you have, like if you want to draw a nose ring where you don't have one, feel free because again, this is for you to experiment and find your style and have fun with things like I cannot express it anymore. Did align, bumped up the stroke, the same way I did the eyelid, and I'm just going to change the uniform to width profile one. That is my favorite one, it just arches everything. It creates clean lines at the end. So boom, got a nose ring and I'm just going to bring us to the front. Other elements like thinking about the lips. Sometimes I like to keep the lips pretty blank and not give it a defined smile, but in this case since I do have that attitude in a photo, I want us to portray that in my self portrait because again, going back to my words and to my Pinterest I want this unapologetic edgy style. So I want to create some type of expression on my lips and I'm just going to try out what I want that to look like. All right, so let's create an expression on the lips. Pencil tool, my bff, just going to broaden the stroke and then use the widths. So let's back out. I like this, it give you a little staring and look, but I like it. Other forms a detail again, personality is key. I wear a lot of chains at all times. So I want to create a gold chain. I'm just going to go back out, to the outline version because I need to be able to see my neck and where I want the chain to fall. So I'm going to use the pencil tool. I might end up using the pen tool if I can't angle it the way I want to, but let's try it. Actually I'm going to use pencil a lot, just with these edges and then follow the arch. Boom. Again, just making sure you connect your anchor points. That's the huge thing. It can save you a lot of trouble. Save you from a lot of trouble down the line of having to piece together anchor points. So I know my chain is gold. So let's throw in, well, gold and awesome. Go in with this line, tuck it, and again being able to use the arranging, so bring this forward so then the chain can tuck under. Going back to the Pinterest board, there were a couple of pictures of Nike's Shoes. I love the idea of just do it. I'm a big sneaker hit and plus I have on a Nike sports bra. So I want to add that element. So pencil tool. We've got a Nike sports bra. All right, so another element of just fun detail that I want to add. So obviously my jacket has a ton of patches but I don't really want to include all of the patches on my jacket. So I think I just want to look at this front one because it's the one that you really see in it. That's the one that has a message. So again, you can do whatever you want to. If you want to make this a circle instead of doing what you have on, just feel free but I love the shape of this patch. Going in with my pen tool and just following the shape. This part is where you really have to dig into your personality. Where is the part I have to dig into my personality and figure out what do I want this patch to say? I want to create something that's more just tailored to me. So again, referencing in the Pinterest board. If you notice I had a lot of inspirational women, a lot of things that were unapologetic, a lot of things that felt very spicy in tone, that's the red, oranges, like it just feel hot. Another thing that I relate to a lot, is music and one of my favorite artists right now, is Megan Thee Stallion, if you don't know her look her up. But one of the main ethos of her music is this hot girl element. So I've been calling myself a hot girl lately, and I want to add that into my illustration because it's a part of me. So this is also a fun thing to know is that when playing with type, you can bring in your own type which right here you have the type tool, which I'm pretty sure the keystroke is just T which is very easy to remember verse other ones, and you could just bring in the type that you want to use. For example, whatever you want to type, but in this circumstance, I'm going to draw the wash just because I think it gives it more of, I don't know, a homegrown. It's just something that feels personable about a verse having straight edge topography, especially when it's illustration is very, one, personal but then two, is not super straight edge. So you can bring in walking type and play with what you want to play with. Let's go in. I wanted to say, "Hot girl." So I'm using the pen tool and I'm literally just drawing out the words. So I'm just going to grab all of these and then, I'm going to do, Command G which combines them almost together as one object. I just want to hold that there because I'll change it once we do the colors, and I just want to make it easy to change It all at one time. All right, so I think we're at a good spot when it comes to adding details, sort of a recap as I go through just to let us see the most updated piece. All right, so we're at a good place when it comes to body facial, and outfit details. Feel free to take it to the next level and even add more shadows, more details, whatever you want to do. So a big thing in my work that I use in almost every piece is these wavy patterns at the background of almost anything that I do, and I just love to have something that's in the background. I think of it as the foreground, middle ground, background elements of since you're creating a pretty flat piece, to have different things. Layer brings a little bit of off to it. So I'm just going to create little shapes using the pencil and pen tool. If you notice, it's like a reoccurring theme of me using the pencil tool for more of the curvy elements that needs to feel more hand drawn, and then only using the pen tool to anchor it all together. Again, don't worry about color. Also this, if you decide to use background elements, think of stuff that frames the piece, isn't too distracting, but brings some element of life to it, and this looks a little distracting honestly because the colors are crazy, but we're going to nip that right in about just a second. So send that to the back, and then I think I want another one there. Boom. So now you have most of your details in place at this point. You have your background elements whatever you want to add in. So essentially, your illustration will live on some type of background, whether you want to a solid background, whether you want to add texture in it later on, you need that background. So let's go ahead and create a new layer that this can live on, and I recommend putting this layer in between the background and the artwork. So let's just create a square. Create whatever size you plan to go for. Again, the color does not matter. All right, so I sent it behind what we also have our background image that is locked. So it's perfect so you can actually see how your illustration lives on this colorful background. So now you have all your elements in place. I'm just going to lock this and these little elements just so we can move things around. Another approach, so if you want to move certain areas without moving around everything else, just grab them and lock them because that's the easiest way. Awesome, so we can unlock everything, save. Details are there, background elements are there, little ins and eyes that you want to use are there, if they are not, do not panic. Once we're done with color, you can go in and start tying those loose ends. So let's jump into the color section, my favorite.
9. Choosing a Color Palette: Now we're in one of my favorite pieces of the course, which is color. So color plays a huge part in my work. I love to create things that are in your face they stand out, like if you're scrolling on an Instagram feed, it's like boom, right there. You can't miss it. Then also just thinking about the psychology of color. This is something to just keep in mind when you're figuring out your colors and using color. Different colors evoke different feelings, naturally. So if you even think about branding, like if you see a Coca-Cola can, that red is symbolic and you know that's it or if you think about colors that are used to show prosperity, which are usually green. So when you think of green, you think of things that are growing like a Earth Day or you think of money also as prosperity. When you see red, you think like in your face, stop. Which is why stop signs are red. So there are definitely psychology elements of just choosing color and I like to keep that in mind when doing my work. It's like, okay, what am I creating and what emotion do I want it to evoke? Sometimes I just use whatever colors I want to and I want to take you through my guide of using color and then also give you some of my resources that I have when picking out color palettes. So jumping straight back into the piece. Few things that I want to do. So going back to your handy dandy Pinterest board because again that's why we made it. I want you to reference it. I want you to pull colors from there. So I have a few images that I am going to bring in, just slide them right from your desktop to Illustrator or you can go and do file in place like we did last time. I'm just going to embed these basically making sure they stay in the file. So I'll just pull three photos that are pretty similar in color. Now I love keeping a messy art board, when it comes to color. I just create palettes in circle. You can get a square and test out your colors. You can do it if you want to. I don't know, there are something about circles that are just more enjoyable for me. So I'm going to copy a few circles. Right now, I'm just selecting option and dragging. So handy-dandy eyedropper. I'm just going around and saying what colors this photo has and see what I like. So I love this bright orange and that's one thing I notice. In my Pinterest board, tons of oranges, tons of pinks, blues, and reds. I'm saying, what do I want to do with this? So pulled out a few colors from here, creating this cool monotone thing. Also if you keep them messy and don't streamline, when you're picking out your colors, you see what works with what. You can tell that, like this blue and like this color, like this light orange works, really keep together. So keep it funky. Don't put a lot of pressure on yourself to have all your colors in a row or in some type of formula. Another thing to keep in mind is, which is really how I make a lot of color palettes is just to trust your instinct, trust you're good. Trust what you like honestly, more than anything, because this is a project. This about you. This is your self portrait. You can do whatever you want to. Your colors don't necessarily need to be in harmony. You can do whatever you want to. So these are just tools to get you thinking about how to pull out palettes based off the information you've created for yourself. So I think, I have a lot of colors pulled out and I'm going to just keep these up here for good measure. Just so you can refer back to it. So that's one thing that I want you to do, pull images out of your Pinterest board. Some that have the same vibe, like you see a lot of repetitive colors or different things, bring those in. I purposely chose a photo that was illustration based or like art base in general and then a photo that was more of just, of something random like a landscape showing that you can really pull inspiration from any type of photo. Keep those up there. This is a tool that Adobe has within Illustrator that helps you select color palettes based off palettes that they've generated in some system that they have, which is absolutely amazing. Go to "Window" and then go to "Color Themes." So in Color Themes, you have the option to Create, Explore, and then Save Your Own Themes and this is really a lifesaver. So let's say, you're working on your illustration and one thing that you're super inspired by are sunsets and you're like, I really want a sunset palette, I think that will be tight. So sunset, so you have a lot of different palettes that remind you of a sunset from warmer tones to darker tones, everything. So you have all themes. You can do the most popular and it'll give you a set of different things that people have used, like, I want the most popular sunset. Most used, you can flip through those. You can go through what's the most used for this month, what's the most used for the week, what's the most used in all time. It gives you all the variety of options. So let's go back to sunset. Let's say, you see, I really like this candy sunset. I might use this for something else. All right, so you can add to favorites or you can add to swatches. I recommend adding to swatches just because your swatch is a part of your grand color scheme and your grand color swatches and it's easier to access. So add to swatches, then you're going to go to Window. Go down to Swatches and it is right here. So now, when you pull up your color in general, you will always have this swatch right here, where you can just say like, hey, I want it to be this color. You can pick directly from your sunset category, just like this and at this point I'm just selecting different pieces of the illustration and simply clicking on the color. That's how easy it is. So that's resource number 2. Resource number 3, color guide. So again, "Window" "Color Guide." This is probably one of the most hands-on but then also fun ways to create a color palette and this is also the best way for you to use your instinct on what you think looks good. So in general, I'm really vibing with the orange. So I'm going to take this orange, again just copying and you can tell, which color is in motion by what's highlighted right here in this corner pocket and right here in your color guide. So this is the color that Adobe is going to pull to a create another palette from. So like your source color. Let's make a copy of this, just so you won't lose your source and again I like to keep it messy because you just want to see how colors combine with one another. All right, so make sure that this color is the same right here. If it's not, just click it. Click right here. It will pop up. Hit this little arrow and boom, you have a hell of a palette. So basically, Illustrator pulls out what the different colors are that are in sync with the color that you chose. So if you're like, hey, I want this background to be this orange but I need something to offset that. So maybe this shape should be the complimentary color. So go on back, making sure this is selected, finding colors that you think really compliment it. I'm not really into the bright coral color but maybe it is this blue and it's funny because guess what, that blue is right there and I totally didn't even mean to do this. It's just, again, one your eye, and what you think goes with what. Then two, looking at the different palettes to see what's complimentary? What's monochromatic? What's the compound color? So I have these two that I think are pretty funky together and you can either take this orange again and see, okay, but what else is cool with this orange? Maybe it's a more of a warmer color, let's go with this pink and again not even trying to do it but there's the pink right there. That one is more of a hot pink but you still know that you're into the same family, which again shows what your eye is drawn to, is what your eye is drawn to. So the fact that I was really looking at this stuff on Pinterest, is embedded in my head already and I'm making these selections without even looking at that photo. So I have one more tool, that I'm going to show you for using color. It's a super cool app that I use called Adobe Capture, where you can essentially just take a picture of something and it pulls out a color palette and we can save it and it goes straight to Illustrator. So now I will give you a little demo of how that works. So essentially you can take a photo of almost anything and it will pull out color. So even now, as you see the colors dancing around on the phone, it's picking up the different color palettes. So let's go to camera, so you see these little dots. They're hovering over pieces of the illustration. You can move them around. There are certain colors that it isn't capturing for instance, I don't really care that much about this pink color. So I am just moving things around to see, okay, what's the cool color palette. I like the different oranges and browns, awesome. So this is a solid color palette. So let's say, yes. Then from here it basically gives you the same setup as the Color Guide in Illustrator. You can see the different harmonies about what works where. You can change the different shapes, opacity, and you can pull out different swatches. So let's go to "Save" and if you're wondering, okay, where do it save to? It saves directly into your library on Illustrator. It may take a couple of minutes but give it a second, it'll be right in your library. So I have my import up, boom it's there. So one thing to know is that, you do need to be signed into the the same Adobe Creative Cloud e-mail that you're using on Illustrator so that it can go to the same library. Save it. Again, mine is already pulled up but you would usually go to Windows and then Libraries, right here and boom, the first thing you see, is this color guide. So you can use them in all you work. It's already there. It's saved. You can edit. You can create it to your swatches but you don't necessarily need to because it's right there. So that's a very quick way to get color palettes on the fly. I know, I'm someone who also is just inspired by everyday life, like I mentioned. So I could just be walking down a street and see some cool building that has different colors, I am like, wait, that could an Adobe color palette. Take a photo, bring it into Adobe Capture. It pulls out the color palette, sends it right so Illustrator. So it's like a one-stop-shop. So now, I want you to take the tools that I've given you to discover color and color palettes and add it to your piece and I'm going to dive in and make this something magical.
10. Applying Color: You have the skills to pick out colors, actually a bunch of different skills and tools you can use. So I pulled out that color palette from the illustration that was on Pinterest of the woman in the monochromatic orange, which as I told you, it pulled up right here. So I really want to go into coloring my piece, and one big thing that I saw from my board is just a lot of orange and a lot red. I want to keep that going. From the pieces that I've identified that I liked the most are honestly mostly orange. So I think I'm going to go with a super cool monochromatic orange tone which is sorted in the vein of this using the orange yellow and then a little spice of red. I like this color down here. So honestly, I just go in and play with different colors and still I get the balance that I want. You can tell when things are off if something pops too much on one end and not the other. So let's start with one masking tone because I'm not that color. So one of the pieces that I've picked up from the Adobe Capture is just this brown color that I saw, and it just so happened to be very close to my skin complexion. So I'm going to go in and make me brown where I need to be brown. So I'm just going in and changing all the areas that are reflective of my skin complexions. Again, we can worry about the shadows in just a seconds. So once you have your skin complexion dull that's when you can go in and figure out like what color the shadows should be. I'm just going to select, I shall select these two. I start with the face first, eyedrop, then like I mentioned before, you can either go darker or go lighter. I'm going to go a little bit darker, and to me that's a bit too harsh, so let's play with the opacity a little bit to where it gives me shadow. We have a shadow, and you can take the risk of the pieces and just eyedrop them. If eyedrop something that already has been changing opacity, it basically copies over the same. It is super easy. The major skin element is there. I'm just going to bump up the opacity on this guy. Awesome. A lot of it again is your illustration. This is for you to discover your style and make the design decisions that you will want your final piece to look like. So I'm just giving you the tools and showing you how I think so you can use it for your own stuff. All right. This necklace is pretty gold. I'm just going to match it to that color. So the main thing I usually do is start with my skin tone, and actually, let's jump in and fix these eyelids. Again, using the same concept of using your skin complexion tone and then just going a little bit darker. So can just create the shadow element of these are your eyelids. Awesome. Going out, so the next big piece is really the jacket. Again, I want that hot girl in your face aesthetic. So let's hit the orange. Just for sake of this being so jarring, I'm going to change this to maybe a lighter one, and that's just for now. We can play with that. I just need to be able to see you without, so crazy. All right. So the dimension, the jacket, same thing. Eyedrop the color of the jacket, make it darker or lighter. We're going to make it darker just so it pops. Since we're going with this monochromatic thing, and I think it's the easiest for this situation. For instance, I drew this jacket, and it has a lot of parts. So it has the panels, has the collar, has the sleeve, it has the the patch, and so I could make this some crazy rainbow of a jacket, but I think it's really cool to keep it all in the same family. So you want to worry about one thing sticking out more than the other. All right. So I'm at the point where I'm really just playing with color and trying to make this a little more monochromatic, seeing what works and what doesn't. Like I mentioned, balance, color balance is definitely a key here. You can go crazy, you can pick whatever you want to pick, but just make sure that it feels balanced. If you're ever in doubt of what, "Okay, what does balance feel like?" refer back to those color palettes and the color guide because it shows you what the compound colors are, how colors are in relation to one another, and it just drive your eyes on when something looks balanced versus being out of way, which I know I'm preaching at this point, but practice. You have to practice. This would not be a thing that just happens overnight, but if you put in the work to get it there, then by no time, you'll be creating these color palettes just on the fly. So I'm just switching colors, definitely don't want that. See, this is an example of something that just isn't necessarily balance. It doesn't look bad, but it sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the piece. So just pay attention to the little things like that. All right. Maybe that is too jarring. Often to get the little details like my little hair tie, that's also a color, I love a red lip obviously. Let's get that going. Again, make it make it personal. So if I was to post this on social media and I say, "It's me," people who know me are like, "It's definitely you. You wear a lot of gold chains. You love Nike. You always have a red lip. I think you're a hot girl." They would know. Okay. So I made a good spot with color. I'll probably just tinker with a few things and play with the opacity of different colors. But after this we're going to sort of define your lives. So anything that you wanna do if you want to add in those different details if you want to go in, and close in those anchor points and just put the finesse on your last piece in Illustrator, now's the time to do it because once we're done with this section, we'll be moving on to texture in Photoshop
11. Setting Up in Adobe Photoshop: I went in and finalize all the colors, which not a lot changed. I just went in and changed the opacity on different things and just made the colors more balanced. I also added in a few additional details like eyelashes, a little bit on the hair. Like I mentioned before, going in to any of those lines so it won't seem as sporadic and all over the place. Also another low piece just like a low zipper. That gives you a little bit off to show it is with sleeves. So we're getting ready to take the illustration into Photoshop but I have one quick thing that I want to just brain aware. Add a signature or some type of mark to your work the idea that you're going to share this on internet and everyone's going to love it going to be great. But you want to make sure that you are putting a signature on as you're claiming it as yours because let's say someone may re-post this. And in worst-case scenarios someone may try some claim it is theirs. So you just want to make sure you have that signature on your work that claims that is yours. You want people to know whatever moniker you decide to use. So I simply just use an ill and a J for my initials and I just simply drew this in illustrated I can give you a quick little Literally Bethe like using pencils or just using my initials. Same thing I've been using stroke and cancel. It does not have to be that way. You can create an actual logo that you put on your work. Just make sure that you watermark it to some extent because the internet is a wild place and you don't want your work to get caught up in stuff it's happened to me don't be me. So we're going to bring this in Photoshop not a lot of different tricks here essentially you're creating a new fowl. So fowl new very similar to what we did in Illustrator you picking out what you want your fowl to be. The only difference is will one keep it in RGB. The resolution 72 is the basic resolution for a web but again when we're adding textured to if someone like re-post this. I've had people take my work on a bigger website and is blown up and that looks a mess because it wasn't intended to be that size. So I usually try to keep my resolution between 150 and 300.300 Is the maximum. So usually 300 means you're taking this to print says I'm not and I want to like save room on just foul size because 300 is pretty big. I'd do 150. So we have our art board. Unlock this [inaudible]. What I'm going to do which you can do this a ton of different ways you can either add in the different background pieces one by one to Photoshop. Sometimes I do that like if I want a piece to have a certain texture and the other piece to have a different one you add them in one by one. In this circumstance, I want to take the background which I just clicked it. It's going to light up and your color palette. Double-click, it copy and paste this hex code. Pull up Photoshop. Double-click the colors there you see the same exact box. That's the special thing about Adobe products is that essentially all looks the same. Use the Paint buckets tool again you can click and just kind of hold it. Paint bucket tool. That's your background so want to lock this are now, create a new layer. Go back here. So I mentioned before what you want to grab everything but don't want essentially everything to move lock it. So already have my background. I'm going to grab everything and sometimes I do the shapes. I do like the body of the illustration they bringing the shapes just because I sometimes play around with those colors but I'm pretty sure about this. So I'm going to graph the whole thing copy command "C". If we want to give fancy then drop. It is going to ask you do you want to drop it as a smart object pixels paired, do a Smart RJ. So shift and then drag in. So the reason why you want to make sure you press shift is that you do not want to squish the image and I can show you like if I don't press shift and I just start moving it looks a mess. We don't want that and when it comes up I'll show you. Usually when you pull in things from illustrator allow the color themes in object that you're using will show up in your library Photoshop which Adobe is so seamless and that's why I'm hooked. But let's get rid of this squish thing. Paste again, Smart object. This is why we press "Shift" and drag. In illustrating your designing and vector so you can count a push and pull as much as you want to buy. Photoshop it is not like that. So I have my photo in a good locations and bring it down just a little bit so that sleeve isn't prematurely coming from the screen. So you can feel free to delete any layers and nothing is there. So at this point you have your illustration and your background.
12. Adding Texture: Now, texture. It's so many ways you can add texture. It has so many resources of free textures. I will give you a link to a website that has plenty of resources where you could just pull different textures from, but right now I want to show you my signature texture that I use in all of my work which super easy, it's like a little grain situation. New layer, select that, going back to your paint bucket tool. We're using the same tools over and over for different results and this is great. So you want to splash a color of white on your art board. One good thing about Adobe is that they always have white and black queued up in this corner. So you can just select it, get your white, always. So it's supposed to cover the illustration just like this. So white art board, go to Filter, Noise and then you want to add Noise. You already see like the little grain and you can have like a more of uniform grain, it's like sporadic, and like super grainy, you can't go wrong, it's really just up to you. You can change the amount. So this is intense, I don't usually go further than probably maybe like 50s if there, but again, always select monochromatic. This is better for me, it's what I like to do. Honestly, if you don't select it, is just more of contrasting type of grain, but I could do monochromatic. So you can zoom out, see noise, just click Okay. So you're like, what is this random piece of white layer? We're going to make it queue. So go to Normal. So these are your blending models. You can basically blend anything together, which is why Photoshop is so tight. So let's say you want to multiply this into the illustration, then it's more of like a darker contrasted type of sound. I always use Color Burn. So Color Burn, essentially, makes the colors more spicy, it's like burning it into the illustration, which is, I don't know, I'm really into it. So creating the grain texture, as I mentioned, a full opacity is a little bit jarring. So I like to take it down and again, this is like if you seasoned your food to taste like figure out, what just makes you feel okay, and I like the layer. It's like right now it has a good grain which you can zoom in. If you zoom in to 100, you can see how it would look, let's say, if you do it printings like grain texture. But I think I want to add another layer of it. So make it a little bit more pop in but not as much as it would be if you just use one. So this one has a feel of 12 verse the other one which is 46. So it just gives me like I need. As you see, I mean this is fine, but this just gives everything a little bit more pop, like my skin looks more enriched just like I'll look moisturize here verse as flat as it was in the first one. So that's the t on my secret texture which is just creating the the white art board, the white layer going into the noise, fixing it with the procedures that you want basically confirming the amount of noise that you want, then bring it in using the blending tools. So Color Burn is my favorite, but you can flip around and see if you like soft light or hard light. Just remember that you can mix it and you can totally change the colors of your piece. So that's why I like to use Color Burn, because it just gives that off two pieces that's changing the entire thing. So those are my two signatures which I did not do my golden rule which is to save your file. So let's make sure we save it, I'm just going to put it, and let's save it. Because we do not want to lose this. All right. So that's my signature, but like I mentioned, I want to give you a few resources on free textures. A lot of common textures are like grunge textures, like the wrinkled paper texture, clouds, different things that give your background a little bit more of a push. Those are just ones that I usually use a lot. So I pulled out one which is a grunge texture. You can download it in the resources, free resources. One thing to mention is, let's say you go on your own height for textures. Just remember that it needs to be something that is high resolution because you don't want to add a texture and then the super pixel when you zoom in, make sure is high res, so then you can play with the blending options and get something that is way cleaner than a super low res texture. So I have my grunge, obviously, super grungy is right there, and now is just about playing with variety saying what we did last time like do you want to do overlay which this, just a bit intense which I do like overlay by not it's intensity. But it does give a very cool texture to the backgrounds, so maybe is like, I don't want to use it on top. Maybe I end up using it as the background, which is also a different option, that's why I'll place the background in first just in case I wanted to do texture just on the background and not on the actual piece. But I do want to do texture on this piece. So add in the grunge, again, overlay which I think I want to keep it there, but let just see what. Now I don't know how I feel about this, but it's very interesting. You can see how Color Burn works in different ways. Let's go overlay, and you can see the progression. I'm going to bring this down because, like I mentioned, I don't want it to be super intense. You can see what part that it's actually placed if you remove the other ones, but I love how this just give a little bit of texture to my skin and it looks like little spice which must again is perfect. So you can see how it make it look more real, then also cool texture in the background. You see all these different elements. All that gives your piece just a little bit more. If you're a super into art, and I mentioned this before, you know the whole foreground, middle ground, background all this stuff. So you want to create it, whereas dynamic all flex versus being extremely flex. So we have our two textures that are more of like the signature Lacey grain texture, and then we have a grunge one. Now I think we're at a guise by. I think I have my piece exactly where I want it. I basically just went in and changed some of the opacity with the textures, but really not that much different. I just wanted to balance it a little bit, and we're at the finish line almost, super happy with how this piece turned out, I hope you're happy with how your pieces turned out because the next step is to export it and share it with everybody and your mama.
13. Exporting, Sharing, and Next Steps: All right. So the piece is done. I hope you're just as happy as I am with your final product. Definitely want to see it. So I'm just going to take you through the process to export it, super, super easy. Just want to make sure you have the best image to save for web. So File, Export, and Save for web. Straight to the point. Then, depending on how you're using it, you can pick JPEG or PNG. I usually go with a JPEG. Super easy. Its universal. Right here, you'll see the quality. Right now, it's on 60. You can boost it to 100. Honestly, 60 could work in my case only because I already had the resolution at 150, so it's already a bigger image file-wise. But for clarity, we'll do 100. Save. Save it wherever you want. I love to see things on my desktop that I've never cleaned. Boom, it's there. You have your photo, your illustration. Let's just double-check to make sure it's there. Boom, illustration, right there, final product. So now, I want to give you the lacy tips and tricks to get this out into the world successfully. Okay. So we're at the finale. At this point, your piece is done, and now, it's time to get it out in the world, which is one of the biggest components of this. We want you to share it. We want you to get it out and get used to people loving and seeing your work. It'll also put you in a position to get those jobs that you want to get. So a few of my top tricks, I want to share in are, one, actually share it. It's so many artists who keep all their works to themselves, and if no one knows who you are, then they can't hire you for anything. If they don't see your work, then you're still are just this mysterious artist and we just don't see your stuff. So one of the scariest parts is putting it out there because it's like your baby. You're putting everything out. It's scary, but it's always worth this. So A, put it out there. I recommend using different forms of social media. Instagram is the biggest platform for visual content. I highly recommend it. Also, Pinterest. If you want to go to the OG spot, Tumblr, awesome. If you're who wants to put your work in more of like a designer category, then we mentioned Dribbble before. We mentioned Behance before. All good platforms. I'm going to put a lot of emphasis on Instagram because I've seen it as a way to directly connect with people who you want to work with, and especially the brands and all that good stuff. So one, tag people who relate to your Instagram pulse, and I'll use mine as an example. So I have Nike. I have the Swoosh. So there might be something that Nike might be interested in using it for something, I don't know, or maybe someone from Nike sees it and he's like, "Hey, we want to hire this girl to do something else." So tag Nike and all Nike adjacent, like in my situation. So I'm thinking about from the Nikes to people who use their content, whether that's retailers. I'm thinking like Foot Locker, Champs. Anybody who would be interested in using a Nike product and fits that realm, I would take them. I also think about just design platforms. So AIGA is one of the biggest platforms for designers. Maybe you want to connect with them, and that could be to network, to be on a project. They're always doing conferences and events, maybe they can call on you to speak about your work. So also tag them because that's a community of designers or at least an example. Also, think about different places you would want your work to exist. So there is a certain company you want to work for or, let's say, you're really interested in creating content for, I don't know, Bleacher Report, then tag them. Interact with people. Find out who is running the social media accounts and interact with them because one piece of social media is being social. A lot of people lose that element of it, but that's one big piece is put your work out there and also be social with people. That is the key. Put it out there and try to get these people and these brands attention. So think about the type of work that you want to create and the environment that you want to be in, and create your own magic, and create your own opportunities, and share it. I just can't go on and on about it. You have to share it. I'm going to give you a few prompts, different categories, to just have you thinking about what these illustrations could look like. I challenge you to do your own challenge. Whether that's creating for a week, whether it's 30 days, I want you to create something and constantly create. All right. So I want to give you four prompts that can essentially be used for any type of illustration that you want to use going forward. This will jump-start your thinking process of what to create and, hopefully, you do your own challenges. So four prompts: music, fashion, people, and lifestyle. To give you a little bit of depth of what each of those means, which, again, resource link, we're going to have more. But let's take music. Maybe you do a single cover a day or maybe a single cover a week, however, you want to change it up similar to what I did. Creating something that visually just has all the elements of music and something that you love. For fashion, maybe it's you drawing your favorite pair of sneakers or your favorite sneaker collection, maybe it's a whole illustrations series of Air Force Ones. Take it and mix it, however, you like. For lifestyle, they can be anything. Maybe you're really, really into health and wellness, and you're like, "I really just want to draw food that keeps the community healthy." That can be a salad. It can be, I don't know, organic smoothies, however you want to draw your food. I think that'll be a cooler project. Then, people. People is really fun. You can do family members. Maybe you're doing family portraits. Maybe you're doing people who inspire you, people who are speaking out, activists, or just people who you think are really amazing and you want to draw them because they have like bomb-ass facial features, however you want to do it. Those are simple prompts that could just jump-start your creativity and get you thinking about your style and finding it. Don't forget to use the tracing method. Don't put pressure on yourself to put pen to paper. Use the method that I taught you, and just go ahead and create. Use all the prompts, go forward. I, personally, want to see all of it. Drop it in the class project. Write me on Instagram. However, you need to contact me. All my contact information will be in the resource notes. But I want to see your work and I want you to get creating because, again, if you do not create and put it out there, no one knows you exist. We all started somewhere. It's very rare that people just came out the womb being like fire. So you have to practice and just trust yourself. Don't let any of the noise really get to you when working, just find your style. I know it'll take a while. I've mentioned time and time I'm always developing, I'm always trying to figure out. No one on this earth has everything figured out. So give yourself some grace and go create, and I want to see it.
14. Final Thoughts: All right. Congratulations. You've finished a class. You made it. I feel like we learned a whole lot in a little bit of time, but that's the great part about Skillshare. You can always go and re-watch any lesson you need, go back to it, take notes. Key takeaways from this class, the major things that I want you to walk away knowing are, a, please give yourself grace in finding your own style. Dive into the research, immerse yourself in inspiration from books to everyday life and really, really, really seek out what inspires you. It's usually something that is right in front of you. You just have to hone in on it and figure out what that is, but that's number 1. Number 2, I want you to take this very low maintenance approach to creating and apply it using the four prompts that we gave you. We would love that. Create, create, create. Do not be intimidated by the thought of what an artist should look like. Just go ahead and create. Three, sharing it. Again, if you don't share it, no one knows. Share in Skillshare because I want to see it, your peers want to see it, we all want to inspire each other, and then put it out in to the world. Put it on social media, Instagram whatever you want to do. I want to see your work, I'm excited. I want to hear success stories about how you found your style and putting it out there and also just take on a challenge. You never know what you can do and so you do it. I think I'm a good resource in just example of that. Thank you for taking my class. Thank you for rocking with me in all of my teachings. I'd love to see you here again and let me know how you like it and share your work.
15. Explore More Classes on Skillshare:
Laci Jordan, Multidisciplinary Artist
