Digital Illustration: Shape, Texture, and Colors in Adobe Fresco

1. Introduction: Hi everyone. My name is Sarah Nelson. I'm an artist and illustrator in Los Angeles California. I love to draw, I love to create, it's in my blood, come from a great family. I've been doing this for as long as I can remember. I've learned so much along way. I started in finer, still do a lot of that with pen and Margaret drawing. Then, in 2017, I learned how to do some digital drawing, Kim graphs and iPad, and then Apple pencil, which are two of the things you'll need for this class, and a drawing app in my career was forever changed. I have been able to do opportunities that never would have come my way. I know the power of digital drawing world and how that can transform your career, can be therapeutic. It can give you joy and expand on your talent. I really wanted to teach you this and the tools that I use. I'm really excited that I'm going to break down this class so that it's appropriate for all levels. You've never done anything with digital drawing before, don't worry, I will walk with you and if there's something that you're familiar with throughout the class. Booth throughout the cabin at your own pace. Learn how to do the things that you feel uncomfortable doing. I will go over how to create shape and form that's proportionate. Then we'll go through texture and how to add texture tourists objects. Then we're going to go over color layering, both in pixel brushes and vector rushes. Before we do all of that, I'm going to teach you how to use Adobe fresco. In your class project, thing that we're going to be building for an in this class, two different types of bird of paradise. Both the bird, there's so many different types of variants, but I've got one picked out and then the bird of paradise, the plant. Together we're going to use all those techniques that I just talked about. We're going to empower you to create your own illustration in a way that you're going to be really, really proud. I cannot wait to see what you create. I think it's going to be amazing and I think you're going to blow yourself away. Let's get started with an intro to Adobe Fresco. 2. Intro to Adobe Fresco: Let's dive into Adobe fresco. I am so excited to introduce this platform to you. Again, if you are already really familiar with Adobe fresco or you're going to work with procreate, feel free to skip this lesson or go to another skill share class that dives even deeper into these kinds of platforms to just brush up on all the options that you have in all the ways that the platform functions. If you are new, I'm going to walk you through all of our menu options, the differences between brushes, some of the ways that the tool works, just so that you're totally set up in order to complete this class project. I want to start with our buttons and tools. This is your pixel brush menu, comes with initial set of brushes, but there are an enormous amount of brushes you can download, just google how to import them, it's quick and easy process. The brushes I really recommend are hundreds of free brushes called Kyle's brushes, I use them all the time, but we'll start with pixel brushes. They operate just like their name suggests. Their limitations says that they can't be expanded infinitely, but they hold such a wide range of incredible texture and they can handle being enlarged to most of the most frequently used file sizes. The live brushes are different. They come in both oil and water color. So here's the watercolor brush, they ultimately are pixel brushes, but they are able to imitate both oil and water color mediums by blending, absorbing, just like those paints do in real life. As you zoom in, you can see how the texture really reflects the mediums that they are trying to imitate. They stay if you'll notice on the same type of layer as any other pixel brush does, and you can see that there's an indicator on the side of that layer on the right side of your screen, it has a little pixel, and then if you move to a vector brush, it becomes a filled-in circle. Let's talk about vector brushes, these brushes have more limited brush options, but they can expand infinitely, they don't lose their resolution. So as you see, I zoom in here and the lines just remain straight and clear. I love using these brushes. They've been really helpful to me in my work. I was able to wrap this entire train with vector brushes on this drawing app. We're going to dive into some more classic tools, we'll start with the eraser, you can change its size. There are some other options, like softer edges that you can use for the eraser. Then we have the shape tools, they come in a few different shapes, you can change the size just by using the corners and you can also use it as an eraser instead so you can erase the shape that you've created. Then we have the move tool, which does exactly what you think it would, it can expand and contract, but it also can move whatever you've selected in that layer. Then we have the selection tool, which allows you to select specific portions then you layer, move it around, leave it, mask it, expand it, contract it. When you're done with that tool, just remember to hit de-select. The fill tool is also a classic. It allows you to fill with your selecting color. Whatever you have in that circle, it'll fill that color around or within certain objects of that layer and you can choose between a pixel or a vector film. Then we have our color sampling tool, allows you to find colors that you want to match perfectly, can move the sample circle around the area that you're looking to draw color from and it will pick that exact color for you at the multi-sampling tool. You can use that same sampling circle and find an area that has multiple colors layered into it and it will actually sample those colors and create it into a color that you can use with your pixel brush and it saves all the colors and the opacity that you use them up in a palate below. You can also change your brush settings, you can change its size, flow depending on the type of brush there will be a different type of setting options. Then we have our classic undo and redo buttons. Our help section offers a number of tutorials specifically for Adobe fresco by Adobe fresco. Then we have our export publishing options, and you can even live stream your works in progress to the hints. Next we have our document settings, canvas size, you can alter a flip, canvas is rotate things, find full-screen, you can hit that button and any tool that you're not actively using will disappear from the screen. If you click on the layer, you can blend them in a variety of ways or you can change their opacity as a full layer. There's a plus button and i. The plus button allows you to add layers and highlight layers. Lastly, when you close your project, and you're done it'll save and it'll go back to the gallery where you can find all those tutorials. Also remember to check out this skill share tutorials on a Adobe fresco and procreate that I have listed in the class resource section. I hope this was really helpful. I will see you in the next lesson. 3. Form and Shape: We actually get to start drawing. In this lesson, we're going to go over how to create the outline and the basic structure of our bird species and our plant species. But before we start all that, I have to talk about reference photos, lighting, resolution, pose, angle, all these things help create a good drawing. The plant photo is one I took a while back, but the bird of paradise bird is challenging because its native to Papua New Guinea, its not one that I have access to, so I found this image on Adobe Stock Photos, I purchased it for this class, but as long as you're not violating copyright, Google images, Pinterest, Stock photo, they're all great places to find reference photos.I bought photos available in the class resource section along with bunch worksheets for you to practice working from, and I would just really encourage you to try and find your own reference photos and draw from them. There are so many types of birds of paradise and so much to discover about them, so please look them up and try it using these techniques on your own, using a reference photo that you've found. You can import these photos via the photo icon and the right side of your menu. This lesson is all about getting the outline of our subjects right. I've broken down this process into two methods, shape building and a free hand. I'm going to start with shape building in the bird, and then later I'll do free-hand drawing with the plant, and after we're done with both of them, I'm going to show you how to check your work. Shape building is process of breaking down a complex object into its most basic shapes, and the slowly adding complexity. I'm going to move this photo off the canvas just a little bit, I like using vector brushes for sketching because it allows me to draw beyond the canvas, so I'm going to add a new layer and change the color of my pen. When I see this bird and I look for its most basic shapes, I see an oval for the head and rectangle for the neck, circular bump on the head, triangle for the beak, oval for the body, curved rectangle for the tail, and some sweeping lines here at the base. Once I have these shapes, I'm going to add a new layer and switch my pen to black, and I like to start with the head again, we're going to refine what we started, when I look at the neck and the head, I'm going to see that there's a slightly curved neck line, and look closely for angles, curves, and I'm going to notice that my shapes might not be perfectly aligned, they might be too small or too big, I can fix that as I'm going around them, remember this is just a skeleton to work off of. When I look at the beak, I can tell that the beak is curved, not just flat triangle. I'm going to start filling in some of these wing feathers, making sure that this outline is accurate or as close to accurate as it can be, its so important because it'll ensure that all the work that we do in the following lessons, pen texture and color layering, that it all looks good from here. I think we've gotten the bird off to a good start. Let's talk about free hand, hide your layers that you've worked on so far with the bird, we'll stay in our vector brush, I'm going to start with black right away. Free hand is the method of drawing where you draw what you see as you've seen it, and begin by finding your starting point. As I'm drawing, I'm keeping my eyes on the image for more than what I'm actually drawing, as I'm drawing, I'm paying attention to all the tiny details, I'm always checking what lines up with what I'm currently drawing, how does it sit in relationship to other curves, other petals, and I always want to make sure that I'm never drawing something higher than it's supposed to be, it's really all of that observation. I'm working very slowly around the flower from my starting point, this is a process that I use the most in my own work, but it usually reads for me the least amount of corrections because I'm paying such close attention as I'm creating. Looks like we did a pretty good job of getting the bird of paradise down, so let's get to talking about how we check our work. First, I'm going to add in select a new layer, change my pen color. I'm going to use a method that I call anchoring. I call it that because it helps us to solidify and anchor places together. When I zoom into this bird, I can tell that the eye aligns with the very tip of the beak, and the chest to the bird aligns where the top of the beak and the head meet. You can use this straight line tool too, and I can tell that the base of the foot is hitting the edge of that color fade in the end of the foot hits the middle of the yellow strip. You can go horizontally too. You can go into as much detail as you want, and eventually you'll have this grid to work from. It makes sure that things aligned, its incredibly important when you need to draw something that has to be identifiable based on characteristics, you have to make sure that the spots are in the right place, just one shift in those characteristics could lead someone to believe that they're an entirely different type of bird. As you can tell, I have a lot of corrections that I need to work, that being said, bird without this grid looks pretty good on its own, so I'll refine anything that feels like it needs to be refined in order to be identifiable or just because it looks wrong. Once you've corrected anything that you feel like you need to in your own drawings, you are ready for penn texture, which I'm so excited about. Take your time with this outline, make sure to use the class resource section, you've totally got this and I will see you in penn texture up next. 4. Pen Texture : Welcome to pen texture, so first we're going to talk about hatching and crosshatching. Then we're going to talk about texture and how to apply it, where to apply it within a species. By the end of this class, you'll have texture and value given to your bird and to your plant. It's going to be amazing. Let's talk about pen texture. It serves a role, especially when using vector brushes, because the brush doesn't have texture built into the the brush, whereas pixel brushes can be full of texture on their own. Let's start with a quick look at hatching and crosshatching. Hatching is just using straight up and down lines, repetitive, coming from the same direction, either going up or just going down through repetition we create value, and so the more that you cover one area with those lines, the darker it becomes. You can practice this by creating a value scale like I'm doing. Make sure you can clearly identify your dark, mid and light tones. Shorter lines spaced further apart, make for lighter areas and dark long lines make for darker areas, and use the weight of your paper, your canvas to help create your light tones. Crosshatching is exactly what it sounds like. You started the same way that you do when you are using hatching, where you're starting with just straight lines. When you add cross-matching to that, you're just adding angled lines to create your dark, mid and light tones. You're still using repetition, not pressure to create your value scale. Both of these techniques are really, really helpful to make things look like they're rounded. Mastering this is really helpful and one exercise that I really recommend before moving onto your actual drawings, is trying to draw a circle and picking where your light sources and then using hatching and crosshatching to make it look round. Very important note to this is that you do not curve the lines, you keep them straight and you just move the line of straight lines. You move those lines with the curve of the shape. I'll use crosshatching to start adding some darker shadows to the base. Notice I'm adding shorter lines, making them more spaced out as I get closer to the lightest spot. Line direction is really, really important and going to help you make things look rounded. Take some time to practice this, check the class resource section for notes on hatching and cross hatching. Now let's talk about the Bird in Paradise. We're going to start with the bird. I'm going to add a new layer. There are two ways that I decide where hatching and cross hatching belong. The first thing that I'm asking is where are the darkest parts, because this black in my pen is going to be the darkest part of my drawing. But because hatching and cross hatching have these porous textures to it, I can make my blacks dynamic if I keep them a little bit lighter and don't just fill everything in. So if I start with this black portion of the head, notice my pen is set down on the edges of the darkest parts and moving inward, I may fill in some of the cracks, but I want to leave room for different dark shades to shine through. I'm also just going to color in a portion of the eye and I'm going to leave a highlight. The second thing that I'm going to look for applies now, where do I need to imply that there's a texture that needs to be defined. So usually I would not give a bird a straight outline because their edges are feathered. So I'm actually going to add another layer and make my initial outline a little transparent so that I can create dashed lines and apply feathers on the exterior. I'm also going to add the small lines representing tufts along the head, along the feathers, and where there are hard lines, I'll just add a more defined line. I like to call this method implied lines basically means that you aren't drawing every little thing that you've seen, but you're giving hints of what exists so that our minds can fill in the blanks. The angle of your line will help imply that there is a curve, which direction the feathers are going in, etc. Now looking at the lower wing, it is so dark and then add a layer of hatching and cross hatching to add some dimension to this dark area, this process definitely takes patience. I'll have this layer available in my class resource section just so that you can get a close up at how I added texture to both the bird and the plant. I think this texture looks pretty good. Let's check in and see how this translates to a non feathery being. Implied line is going to be mostly affirming that the petal surfaces are smooth and it's also going to show where our shadows are. So remember to stay in vector here and let's look at where they add small lines to show where the shadows and shape shifts. I want that base, especially to feel round and the petals still look like they're folding and shifting on top of one another. Notice how angled lines really helped to emphasize the roundness of this base. Because the flowers primary characteristic is bold coloring, you don't need to add too much pen texture. We want the colors to really pop, but this will help us emphasize its texture and some of the shape. You can see I'm following the shadows and the petals I'm not curving my lines. Just making the row of curved lines move with the angle of the shadow. By just adding this amount of shading, it's really starting to bring this to life, which is so fun. Check the class resource section to get a closer look at this pen texture for both drawings. This one because there's so much bold coloring, it didn't take that long. Next up, we're diving into color layering. 5. Pixel Brushes & Bird: It's time to color. I am so excited. We're going to start with pixel brushes and in the next lesson we're going to talk about vector brushes. You should experiment beyond what I'm going to teach you on what brushes become your favorite and how they interact with one another, but we're going to learn the things I use most often and I think they're going to be helpful to you as we go. I'm really, really excited to share these techniques with you and I can't wait to see what you make. Let's talk about pixel brushes first. Take some time to peruse your pixel brushes, and your live brushes if you haven't already. Be sure to download those Kyle brushes too if you haven't. I'm personally going to approach this from a watercolor textures, my favorite is Kyle's AM watercolor paper, a 116 pixel brush. I've created a new layer that is beneath the outline and the textured layers. I'm going to start by using my color picker, moving over the photo, start with your lightest tones first, I'll start with yellow and use it to create this base layer, this tool, even when it is set to a 100 percent opaque, it's still pretty transparent and continued layered or darken just by adding pressure. I love this brush. When I look at this yellow portion of the back of the head and back, there's a lighter strip of yellow that I really want to preserve. So as I move around, I want to add pressure and layers of color to the darker areas at the top and the bottom and lighten up on that middle zone. Don't worry about painting out of the lines. You're painting on a separate layer so you can easily erase any paint layers up to the edge without messing up your outline, with that all of the colors that you use and their level of opacity will be saved with your color wheel. Now I'm going to create a new layer and start to drift into reds and oranges. New is my color picker trying and capture the right shade of red. I can also use my paintbrush as a hatching tool. Keep that in mind as a textural option as long as you don't pick up your pen, the color that you've set down already is just going to blend seamlessly into itself. Not every brush works this way. Just remember once you pick it up, it's going to add on top of the first layer that you already laid down. I'm going to try and keep my pressure same so that it gives it more of a flat tone. Now I'm going to add darker purple, and I'm going to use pressure enlightened as I had until highlighted areas. Like I said before, I like to create separate layers for all the different colors. It protects me from making mistakes that are really hard to undo. We'll look at how these layers are starting to build. These colors can get so rich, it's so fun, will start to go a little deeper. I'm going to add more variance to the black parts of the head, allows the dark head to be more dynamic and not feel so flat. So you can use your eraser to create some texture if you are using different layers and you have a color underneath a darker tone, you can erase the top layer with little hatched lines to great way to create feathered highlights. I'm going to go darker and add a new layer. I'm going switch to wet brush 1, which is going to give you a real example. To feel free again to try out all kinds of brushes and find the ones that you love. Remember that every tool that you use, pressure and the way that it layers, it's going to be different. I'm adding a lot of shadow and deeper tones to this lower part of the wing. The color's getting richer and richer, which is so fun. You can see the difference that pen texture is making does really add something special. I want to show you process I love. This special blend between 2B pencil and Adobe live watercolor brushes and it adds this really exciting texture. I'm going to use this to create red highlights in the tail, I'm going to switch to watercolor and the capacity of the brush way down so that we can see what it does. I like to put the watercolor line right next to it, not on top of it so that the color bleeds organically into the water. I can also use the layer opacity scale. I can change it's vibrance. So as you can see, the processes to work my way up from light to dark, always adding new layers as I go. Sometimes I experiment, anytime I'm not sure about something, I just add a layer to see what it looks like. Let's look at the ribbons of the tale. I'm going to use a brush where I get to change the thickness as I put down pressure. We have all these small white feathers at the base and they're not going to show up on a white background. One thing that you can do is see what you're drawing looks like on a dark background. Some of our brushes are transparent, so we're going to find a very opaque brush and we're going to use the color white and we're going to color the silhouette of the bird and the branch so that our birds still has a white face. Let's turn to the branch and let's try the dry media brush. I try Kyle's pastel brush. I'll use the live brush to blend the colors and the textures, might add a little blue and continue to switch between texture brushes and the watercolor live brush. We did it. I cannot wait to see your birds. This is so exciting. I hope you feel proud. I cannot wait for you to share with the world. But before we do, let's dive into vector brushes and finish up our plant. 6. Vector Brushes & Plant: Vector brushes. Here we go. If you only on procreate, I just recommend that you use the pixel brush elements and do that for your Bird of Paradise plant as well but for those of you that are using Adobe fresco, this is exciting. We're going to talk about again, color layering, how brushes work, opacity. They're a little bit different when it comes to vectors. I 'm really excited to share these tools with you. Let us talk vector brushes. You may not use vector brushes for most things in your life. But I'm so excited to share this process with you because I think it gives you tools that you need in order to lean into opportunities that may come your way. Like, I could never have illustrated the interior and exterior of the train without these vector brushes. In case something large-scale comes your way and wants you to be confident in your ability to lean into it. I'm going to only use vector brushes and I'm going to be working with the rounded brush because it's the most consistent line quality. The principles are the same as with pixel brushes. I'm going to pick the lightest color then I'm also going to make it fairly transparent. I'm just going to use that color and transparency level to create a base tone for my drawing. I'm going to start with the pedals, by adding this base layer, the bold orange will be able to look a little bit more dynamic. When you lift up your pendant stops blending with your initial layer. If you want to make it seamless, just keep pulling down on your pen until you're totally done with that color after that, you can build on top of it. Now let's start building on our oranges. I'm going to go a little bit more bold and I'm going to add a layer and change the opacity. I decided to add a yellow hint to this orange. I don't need to add this to every pedal, but just to a few, just to make it feel like there's some highlights, little bit of diversity to the orange, though it doesn't feel flat. In this case, opacity is your greatest friend. You need to find your mid tones that you're going to continue to come back to help blend colors together. It's bridge between color levels. I keep your adding layers, the darker and more bold, I go with my colors. I always want to make sure that I have a separate layer to try them on. If you're not sure if you made a color too opaque, you can always work with the layer's opacity and just try tuning it down a bit to see if it allows other colors to shine through. You can see that as I'm layering these, the color's getting a lot richer. It's getting exciting. I'm still trying to leave highlights. I chose to do the petals first because they are all one color and I want to do them all at once to keep them consistent. When I start to add those darker tones, I use it sparingly trying to keep them confined areas where my pen texture shows shadow and that pen texture really ends up being my guide. I'll use some of the same brown as a shadow and some of the other petals, the all create a nice consistency. Just like with pixel brushes, you're trying to build layers of colors with varying opacity, you can endlessly refine your oranges book. Now I'm going to move on to the base. I'm going to add a new layer and I'm going to give it a low opacity and start add a base blue then I'm going to add some fuchsia to the top of that base. This plant is so wild, its colors are so bold, it's one of my favorites. Then I'm going to make it even more transparent and blended into the purple blue layer. These bases especially complex because it's blending bold colors together seamlessly, which is not easy to do. This is going to take some time and potentially some do-overs. Let's look at these dry highlights. We can imitate some of the textures even with an untextured brush by adding horizontal lines on a layer with a transparent way. We'll put that layer above all the other color layers. Now let's start adding our darks and we're going to start at the back of the base where it meets the stem and follow the shape of the shadows and now you need to add some yellowish greens. I added a new layer and I'm just going to add this green changing its opacity as I go so that it blends. I'm going to add this color to the stem too. I can mess around with its order and see if it looks better under some other layers and I can change its layer opacity too and all of those tools, changing the order of your layers, changing layer opacity, all those things really help create some really nice rich blended colors. Now I'm going to add a little bit more of a light gray green on top in order to give it a little bit of a highlight. From there, it's just adding color using blending tone. I'm totally going to admit that this plant is not easy, but it teaches so much. It's got bold colors that are tricky to blend, it's got colors that just don't feel like they naturally blend into each other and glad they are working on it. Beyond that I think we did a good job. I'm really proud of you guys, we did both the plant and the bird, and now we get to talk about sharing it with the world. Up next let's figure out how to publish these and let the world see what we've created. 7. How To Export & Publish Your Work: Let's talk about sharing your work. How you have two birds of paradise. You've got the bird, you got the plant they're fully illustrated, they're on your program. Let's talk about how to get that from your program and into the world. This part is very important. Adobe Fresco and all the other platforms offer a wide range of file types that you can export your work as. Let's find the Share button at the top right, hit "Publish and Export". Quick export is a great option, but it usually is a default JPEG, Publish and Export allows you to also change the file name and pick from a wider range of file options. You have the option to export as a PNG. If you're going to do that, just remember to remove the colored background, whether it's white or a new color that you chose. You can also export as a JPEG which will automatically add a white background, even if he didn't have one. Then you can export it as a Photoshop file if you want to preserve all your layers and work on it a little bit more in some other program. If you save it as a PDF, it saves all the vector qualities of the brushes so they'll remain in their super-power of infinite expansion and can be reopened in Illustrator and worked on from there. You can also share it as a live stream of your work. You can share your work directly to Behance, which is an awesome platform for creatives. If you haven't checked it out already, I highly recommend it. Finally, you can export it as a time-lapse, which is super fun, high-speed recording of your work coming together. It will save in your photos and I would love to see your time-lapse along with your final products in the Class Project Section. Whatever you created in Fresco can be recreated in whole series of ways and shared with clients and friends super simply and really quickly. I cannot wait to see what you created so, get to exporting so we can celebrate your amazing work. 8. Final Thoughts: Friends, you did it. You have officially drawn a proportionate image. After learning how to create on a digital drawing platform, you've learned how to add texture, then you've learned how to create color layers that are rich and beautiful and bring them to life in both pixel and vector brushes, and you've shared your work. That is amazing. I am so pumped, I am so excited. I hope that you feel proud, just cheers to you. I hope that you feel empowered. I hope that you feel like everything that you learned in this class can be translated beyond this moment. I know it can be, I know it can empower you to say the things that you want to say in the world, and I hope that you use them for that, and I hope that you'll share them to the class project section because that's the coolest part of this next step is once you share this, we get to celebrate, you get to cheer you on. Congratulations, thanks for being a part of this class. Please review, please share your work, check out my other classes on Skillshare, and hopefully I'll see you in another class soon.