Digital Painting in Procreate: Watercolor Leaves

1. Class Overview: Hi. I'm Priscilla. Welcome to my Skillshare class. I'm an illustrator, surface pattern designer, and top teacher here on Skillshare. In this class, I'm going to teach you how to create watercolor leaves and wreaths in Procreate on the iPad. Watercolor botanicals are a timeless asset in graphic design. The delicate illustrated motifs add a handmade touch to everything from stationary to fabric. I want to share how I use this process in my design workflow. In this class, you are going to learn basic techniques for using digital watercolor brushes. How to create two different styles of leaves and twigs. Several techniques on how to adjust your colors to give that traditional watercolor look to your motifs. How to use the symmetry tools in Procreate to construct wreaths. Finally, how to cut out your watercolor leaves as standalone clip art with a transparent background so that they're ready for use as graphic assets. To simplify this design process, I've created the following resources that I would like to share with you so that you can use the same tools that I'm using every step of the way. A Procreate canvas with watercolor textured paper, a custom watercolor brush set, a Procreate color palette, and a pinterest board for inspiration. All you will need to take this class is your iPad and your stylus. If you have a spare hour to learn a few new skills that will level up your watercolor workflow in Procreate, join me in class. 2. Class Project : Your class project is to take and share a screenshot of a watercolor motif that you have made using any of the skills that you learn in this class. It could be a single-leaf element or a reef. If you create a unique color combination or arrangement, I would love to see it. Sharing a class project helps to inspire, and encourage other creatives to try their hand at it as well. You can upload your project into the class project section just below this video. If you have any questions about the lessons as we go, feel free to comment in the class discussion section. The class resources can also be found just below this video in the class Resource tab in the web, not the mobile version of Skillshare. You just tap on each resource, and then save it to your file storage. From there, you can open and export it into Procreate. Join me in the next lesson for an overview of the Canvas setup and how to use our digital watercolor brushes. 3. Introduction to Canvas & Brush Setup: In this lesson, I'm going to give you a brief overview of the Canvas from our class resources and how each of the brushes in the brush set works. Hopefully, you have already saved your files from the class resources tab in the web version, not the mobile version of Skillshare, into your file storage. From there, locate your Procreate canvas, save or open it to your device, and select the app Procreate, as the file location to open the Canvas. This will import the Canvas into your gallery. I would suggest at this stage to swipe left on the Canvas and tap Duplicate to create a backup. Tap on the text under the Canvas to rename it as a template so that you always have a blank master you can work with for your other watercolor projects. Now, we can head back to the original Canvas and tap to open it. The Wrench icon at the top left will allow you to access the Canvas tab and then Canvas information. In there in the Dimensions, you can see that the Canvas is already 2,000 by 2,000 pixels and 300 DPI, which is the standard for print-ready illustrations and clip art. Any less may give you blurry or pixelated final images. Back to the Canvas view at the Layers icon we can tap to see our layers. The top section has a section just for the watercolor texture and we'll give our illustrations that traditional look. I've locked it so that you don't accidentally paint on these layers but you can always swipe to the left to unlock it. Below these layers are the layers labeled Paint Here, where we will be doing our painting for our watercolor clip art. You can duplicate as many of these layers as you need by swiping left and tapping Duplicate. At the bottom, there is a wreath template layer for the botanical wreaths we will be creating in a later lesson. You can also tap any layer to reveal the contextual menu, which will allow you to tap Rename at the top to change the layer names as you work. Tapping the Canvas again will hide that menu and the online keyboard. The next resource we will access is the watercolor palette. From your file storage explore or open in Procreate, and it will be added to your color palettes located at the bottom right-hand side of your color menu in the palette section. From there you can tap the three dots to set the palette as your default color palette. This will make it appear at the bottom of your color wheel for easy access. A new feature in Procreate is you can now tap on the horizontal line at the top of the color palette to move it anywhere on the screen as you work. You can also switch between the disc view or any of the other views, including the palette view for easy access. Tapping the X at the top right will then return it to its normal menu position. The next resource you'll need to access is the brush set. Again, you can locate it in your downloads or file storage and then export or open it in Procreate. This will immediately add the brushes to the brush menu in Procreate at the top. To use the brushes most effectively you'll need to make a few adjustments to the preferences in Procreate. Head to the wrench icon on the top left and then the Preferences tab. At the top, the light interface determines the background of Procreate. I keep the light interface off because I find it helps me focus on the Canvas. The left and right-hand interface allows you to choose which side you want to have the brush size and opacity sliders on. I'm right-handed so I'm going to turn that on to make it easier to work with all my main tools on the right-hand side of the screen. Underneath this is the dynamic brush scaling. This needs to be turned on to use the brushes the way that I've created them otherwise you may have issues getting the streamlined features in the watercolor brushes. I also have the brush cursor activated. Next is you tap on the pressure and smoothing. I've set the stabilization at approximately six percent and modified the app pressure sensitivity as well. You can see on the curve where I've added the blue dots by tapping and adjusted the curve by moving the blue dots with my stylus. That's all for our preferences, now we can head back to our brush set and get a quick overview of the brushes we'll be using. The first brush is the textured plane, which allows the texture from the watercolor layers to come through but overall has a uniform stroke. The size of this brush is also pressure sensitive. I generally use this for loose florals and petals. The next brush in the brush set is the textured watercolor brush. This brush is also pressure sensitive for size and brightness. I like to use this brush for foliage and greenery. Pressing harder will increase the size, but pressure will also make the area being pressed look more dilute in color. For both brushes, the edges will have a dried paint texture to them. A lot of watercolor brushes stay quite dilute throughout but I wanted these strokes to look finished like the paint has dried around the edges. The next brush is the watery pulled brush. I created this brush for those who prefer that wet watercolor look. It looks like you are dragging a pigment wash across the watercolor paper. It is also pressure sensitive so the lighter you stroke the more concentrated the pigment and the thinner the stroke. The more you press, the more water dilution in the brush. This brush is great for loose and ethereal watercolor looks so I hope that those that love that style will have a lot of fun with this brush. Next is the watercolor edge brush. This brush has a bumpy edge and deep tone. Use light colors with this one if you want an area of block color. I generally use this as an eraser to erase sections of a watercolor piece without having a perfect edge. Long pressing on the eraser brush will set the brushes and eraser and then you can increase the brush size and have that bumpy watercolor edge as you erase. Next you have the smudge brush, which is similar to the watery pull brush when used as a normal brush but then long pressing on the smudge tool will set it as a smudge brush. This can give great gradual gradients like pulling color by adding water to your brush in traditional watercolor. It allows you to blend colors easily if they're in the same layer. Next is a bleed brush, which allows you to add watercolor blooms to your strokes. Finally, the last brush is a sketching pencil for planning any watercolor illustrations. To clear the strokes from this layer, you can place three fingers on the screen and make a circular motion, or you can tap the layer and select clear from the pop-up menu. That's it for this lesson. I encourage you to have a play with the brushes to get a feel for them and then join me in the next lesson to learn some basic watercolor techniques to prepare for drawing foliage with the brushes. 4. Watercolor Drills: In this lesson, we are going to do a few drills to get you comfortable using the digital watercolor brushes to create leaves. In your brush set, select the textured watercolor brush and a color from our color palette. Use your sliders on the side of the screen to select a medium brush size of about 35 percent. In our layers menu, make sure that you are on a painting layer in the layers panel. To help guide our strokes, head to the wrench icon at the top left and the Canvas tab, and then hit the "Slider" to activate the drawing guide. This will give you a basic grid on your Canvas. Now, we can start to create our strokes. I've created these brushes to operate like round traditional brushes, so as you apply more pressure, the width of the stroke increases, and with less pressure, it decreases. Remember that at any point you can use a two-finger tap on the screen to undo, and a three-finger tap on the screen to redo a stroke. That's the beauty of creating digitally. I can undo one more time. To start off, we'll begin to get familiar within strokes. Less pressure will give you a thin stroke on the Canvas. Pick a grid line and try to create a thin stroke across the entire width. Try to keep your pressure fairly light and keep the line as consistent as possible. Repeat this technique a few times so that you can become more familiar with the pressure you need for thin strokes. Now we're going to create a few shorter lines, and this time we are going to add some curves. When we draw stems, your lines should ideally not be absolutely straight. Nature loves curves, so we need to practice things like C curves and S curves to help us to prepare for drawing stems. The more strikes you do, the more your hand and arm will feel more familiar with more fluid movements. Try to let that movement go not just in your wrist, but through your arm as well. Once you're comfortable, we're going to try a thicker stroke. Try and create a thick, consistent stroke across the whole Canvas. Use the grid lines to help keep the largest part of the stroke, perhaps within two lines of the grid. Continue to create a few of these large strokes to get familiar with the amount of pressure needed for a consistent width. Then try your hand at creating smaller thick strokes across your Canvas. Even basic strokes like this are great for creating abstract watercolor paintings and motifs for pattern design. Now, try a few vertical lines with the thick strokes, and then a few C curves with a thicker stroke. I think that's a good start for this layer. Let's head to the layers panel and untick the layer to deactivate it, and then head to a new painting layer and tap on it until it's blue in color to show it's active. On this layer, we're going to combine these two techniques together. We're going to start with a continuous line without removing our styles from the screen. Starting with light pressure as though we're creating a thin stem, and then we're going to increase the pressure to create a thicker leaf shape, and then go back to our light pressure and then heavy pressure again. We're just going to continue this on-off pattern across the Canvas. As you get to each new line, try and make the sizes similar to the line above, and try to make your transitions fluid as you go from the thin to the wide portion of the stroke. This is really going to prepare you to create fluid leaf structures for your clip art and helps you to get that control. It also makes a beautiful abstract standalone pattern across any Canvas. Next, we're going to try a few common leaf shapes that we can use for our botanical motifs. Feel free to use a new layer if you need to for these. We're going to create a thin line for a stem, then with more pressure for the thicker portion of the leaf, and then finish with a point to create a single leaf shape. Continue to repeat this, but try and add some movement and differences as you create each new leaf, keeping the stem longer and the tip of the leaf on the other end, short and sweet, create some C curved leaves and some S curve leaves. Some shorter, some longer. Each time-varying the pressure from light to heavy, and then back to light. Next, try some rounded single leaves, still using the same technique, but this time making the end of the leaves more rounded and putting more pressure in the center of the leaf to highlight it. Do not remove the stylus from the screen, this style of leaf is more like a eucalyptus leaf. Next, try some teardrop-shaped leaves that are wider at the top of the leaf and thinner near the stem. Finally, we're going to finish up with some double-sided two strike leaves with some whitespace in the center. For these leaves, we're still not picking up our stylus from the screen. For these create the stem with light pressure, more pressure for curved side, and then light pressure as you get to the point, and then reverse down the other side increasing the pressure and leaving a little bit of whitespace between the two sides before connecting with light pressure back to the stem. This is a bit trickier to do, but with practice, it will come more naturally. Try again with another double-sided leaf. You don't necessarily have to connect it back to the stem if you want a looser take on the leaf, but practice this technique a few times. That's it for this lesson, take some time to play with these drills. Experiment with different colors in the color palette and different brush sizes. Create a few abstract mark pieces in watercolor to help you become more familiar with the brushes. I've created a Pinterest board linked in the class resources, where I've curated a collection of botanical leaves for you to use as inspiration as you experiment. When you're ready, join me in the next class to try our first branch and apply our first color technique to enhance it. 5. Simple Leaves & Color: In this lesson, we are going to apply the skills of creating the first of two leafy branches that can be used for clip art. Go to a new layer in the Layers panel and select a color from the color palette. I'm going to use an olive green. Next, we are going to begin with a fairly thin, curved stroke across the center of the Canvas. Feel free to redo it if you need to. Then we're going to add a few leaves. I'm going to use the loose double leaves with the heavy light technique we used in our drills. But feel free to use a single stroke leaf if it feels more comfortable. At this point, we're going to make the branches come off the stem at the same point on either side. We're going to make sure we're adding curves to our leaves for visual interest. Remembering that the aim is not perfect leaves and because they really don't exist, but just a sense of movement in the leaves. We're going to continue until we have about nine leaves coming off our main stem. Remembering that at anytime you can use two fingers to undo if you need to. Once we're done with our leaves on the stem, we're going to create a few filler leaves that you can use for your clip art, which are always great to have as embellishments for your motifs. On the right-hand side, add a single and double leaf to the Canvas that you can use as filler leaves. Once you're happy with your leaves, we're going to apply our first color technique. One of the great parts of using watercolor paint is the ability to bring in different colors to the piece, which is a bit trickier when you're using digital watercolor. We're going to apply a new technique to mimic the traditional process. If you take a look at your twig, we're going to imagine that we have a light source that is hitting our leaves, and this light source is going to come from the right-hand side of the screen. I would expect that the areas on the left maybe a bit darker, as well as where some leaves may overlap other leaves and cast a shadow on the leaves below. For this style, we're going to head to the selection menu at the top left-hand side and tap on it. This will open a new menu at the bottom of the screen. We're going to select our free hand selection and make sure that it is active in blue. Now we're going to make sure only the free hand and ad is active and all the others are deselected. Now we're going to go to our twig and select the areas of the leaf that may be highlighted from the light on the right-hand side of the screen. To close the selection, you need to tap on the gray circle, and then you can continue on and add a new selection on a different leaf. Continue until you have selected all the areas that you would like to highlight on each of your leaves. Then move to your single and double leaves on the right and repeat your selections. Now we can head to our menu at the bottom, and we're going to tap the Feather icon. When we activate it, we can then increase the slider to increase the levels. What this does is feather the color out into a gradient on the edges of our selection so that the colors have a gradual change instead of a harsh line from one color to the next. Then with our selection is still active, tap on the Magic Wand, which is our adjustments menu at the top left, and select the hue saturation and brightness sliders. Begin with the brightness slider at the bottom right, moving it a little bit to the right to mimic that lot on our stem. Then you can increase your saturation and slightly adjust your hue. This will allow you to add more subtle or dramatic color variations to your piece to give your painting a more realistic look. I think this is really improves the look of our leaf, but I still feel it needs a bit more color variation to it. I'm going to repeat this technique by increasing the shadows this time in our leaf. We can deactivate and reactivate the selection in the selection menu by tapping and tapping again. This time we're going to select the areas in the leaf where we would find shadows, mainly in the areas facing away from the light source, using our free hand selection tool. We're also going to repeat these selections once we are done with our main stem on the single and double filler leaves on the right-hand side of the canvas. Again, we're going to feather the areas using the feather tool and adjusting our sliders to our preference. Then head back up to the Adjustments Menu and to the Hue, Saturation, and Brightness. Then adjust each of them this time slightly darker for the shadows, so lowering our brightness. Then you can increase or reduce the saturation and adjust your hue as you feel. That's all for this lesson. Play around with these techniques on a new layer until you feel comfortable with making selections and adjustments on your motifs. Then meet me in the next lesson to try a different style of foliage and a new color technique. 6. Layered Leaves & Coloring Techniques: In this lesson, we are going to create a eucalyptus style twig and filler leaves. Head to the layers panel and untick the layer we have been working on and activate a new painting layer by tapping on it until it turns blue, to indicate it's activated. Head to the color palette and select a teal color. This time, we're going to create a leaf with more of a circular leaf structure. First we're going to start with a stem, with a C curve for this plant across the canvas using very light pressure with our stylus. I'm still using the textured watercolor brush for this. The curved stem makes it easier down the track to use this style of watercolor motif to frame quotes, text, and invitations. When you look at the reference images on the Pinterest board that is linked in the class resources, you can see the shapes of the eucalyptus. The leaves are rounded and slightly irregular in shape, and so they are a very forgiving leaf structure to paint. The leaves come off the stem in pairs and are quite close to each other and begin smaller at the top and increase in size as you move down the stem. You'll also notice that the leaves are quite close together and at times overlap each other. In traditional watercolor, to show this, you can either carefully paint the leaves around each other or you can glaze the leaves, which is a wet on dry technique where you intentionally layer the leaves over each other to create a shadow where the leaves overlap. This gives the indication of light coming through the semitransparent leaves and having a shadowed portion where the leaves overlap. This is the technique that we're going to use with our digital brushes. First begin to create our leaves around the stem starting at the top. I want you to skip where you would place the second pair of leaves and then continue with the third set of leaves. Skip the fourth pair, and continue to the fifth set of leaves down the stem. We're going to continue this until we reach the base of the stem. Continuing to choose different angles. Sometimes you'll have the leaves facing forward so you see most of that circular shape, other times you may want to look side on and see just a sliver of the leaf. But we're going to continue until we get towards the base of the layer. Now we're going to head back and fill in the evens sets of leaves on a new layer. Head to your layers panel and tap on a new layer. Now we're going to go back and fill the even sets of leaves on this layer. We're still going to be using the same technique, still at varied angles, but feel free to overlap the other leaves to create that glazed effect. Try not to leave too much whitespace between the leaves, but take your time as you create them. You can always undo and redo as you go with a two-finger tap on the screen. I really love the effect that this glazing makes. But again, if you look at your leaves and you're not quite happy with all of the leaves having that glazed effect, you can rectify it with one of two techniques. The first is to use the watercolor eraser brush, which will allow you to erase any areas of overlap so that the leaves appear more opaque, and instead of that glaze, it just looks like one leaf is on top of the other. Alternatively, you can use the watercolor smudge brush to blend out the edges of the shadow so that the glazing is not so pronounced. But take a look at your leaf, and once you are happy with the look of your branch, head to the layers panel, and then we're going to merge the two layers together by pinching them. This will flatten them into one layer. Now we're going to apply a different technique to adjust our colors. Duplicate your layer in the layers panel by swiping to the left and tapping duplicate so that you get a darker tone because of the two layers on top of each other. Next, head up to your adjustments menu, and select your color balance. In the contextual menu at the bottom, tap the icon that looks like a sun and select your shadows. We're going to increase the blue because your shadows will have a slightly cooler tone to them. Then we're going to go back to the icon and select highlights. This time, we're going to increase the yellow to add more warmth. Now, if we head back to our layers panel and look at our layers, we now have two slightly different colors for each layer. Now we can head to our eraser icon and select the bleed brush. I'm also going to make sure that the opacity is about 50 percent, and I'm going to use it to erase parts of the top layer at random. We get a bit more variation in color. You'll start to see the other color in the layer below coming through. You can also go to that layer and erase areas that are different to the layer above. Then finally on the side of those layers, I'm going to tap on the letter on the right and then lower the opacity using the sliders of both layers until I achieve a transparency that I'm happy with. This will give color variation and that light watercolor look to your leaves. Now you can pinch the layers together and merge them to form a single layer. Now you can use the move tool at the top to move your eucalypt a little bit to the left. In your layers panel, either select or create a new layer by duplicating. We're going to create a few loose single and double filler leaves, and I'll show you one more color technique with these leaves. Use the same technique to create the single and double filler leaves using our textured watercolor brush. Then we're going to create a new layer above the leaves by pressing the plus icon and setting it to multiply. Then tap on that layer and in the side menu, select clipping mask. Now we can use the watercolor bleed brush and a light green color and start to add a bit of color to the sides of the leaf. You can experiment with lots of different color variations with this, perhaps a deeper tone to darken areas of the stem. Once you are happy, adjust the opacity of both layers until you get to a transparency that suits you. Then you can merge the layers together by pinching them. That's all for this lesson. Now, take all of your eucalypt layers and pinch them together so that they're all in one flat layer. Have an experiment and play with these techniques that we've learned. Then join me in the next lesson to create a watercolor wreath using the symmetry tools in Procreate. 7. Creating Wreaths Using Symmetry: In this lesson, we are going to create two versions of watercolor wreaths using the symmetry tools in Procreate and the watercolor techniques we have learned. To start with, head to the Layers panel and deactivate any painted layers and then go to the wreath circle there at the bottom of our layers panel and tap to activate it and tick the box on the right to make it visible. Then we're going to duplicate the painting layers above it to make sure that we have enough for our wreaths. Finally, head to the layer just above our circle template and tap on it and tick to activate it. Now we can set up our symmetry options. Head to the wrench icon and on the Canvas tab, activate our drawing guide. This time we are also going to tap Edit Drawing Guide in the menu at the bottom and select the symmetry option and tap Done. In our layers panel we'll see that this layer now says Assisted on it and on your Canvas, you should have a line to show you where the symmetry is. Select a color from your color palette. I'm going to go with an autumn theme for this one so I'll select a bird, orangey tone. Now using this circle template as a guide, draw a stem using our textured watercolor brush, using very light pressure on your stylus. When you get to the end of your stroke, hold the stylus on the screen to activate the quick shape tool, which will smooth out any irregularities in your stroke. You can still move the arc now to different positions if your stylus is still on the screen. But you'll also see text at the top that allows you to further edit the arc. Tapping on this text will enable blue dots. Now you can tap on the dots and move them with your stylus to further edit the arc. Because our symmetry is activated, this will also be reflected on the other side of the Canvas. Now that we've done our main stem, we can begin drawing our leaves. For this wreath, I'm going to create leaves in an alternating pattern with this first color down the stem using our light, heavy and light technique. Take your time thinking about the pressure that you are placing in your stroke so that you can control the shape of the leaves. At any time, you can do a two-finger tap to undo and a three finger tap to redo. We're going to continue all the way down the stem until we get towards the base. Next, head to the color palette and select another tone. I'm going to select a yellow color and create leaves on the other side of the leaves I've just laid down. For each orange tone leaf, I'm going to have a yellow colored pair to go with it as I move down the stem. Just like that, you have a really effortless wreath that looks like it took a lot more time to create than it did in a beautiful watercolor texture. This is great for framing any kind of text or images. I'm really happy with how this wreath looks. Let's go ahead and create one more. Head to your layers panel. And then we're going to de-select this layer and activate and tick a new layer. Tap on this layer to activate the drawing assist in the side menu, which means that the symmetry will be applied to this layer as well. In Procreate, the symmetry is not automatically attached to each layer so you have to do it each time, even though the overall symmetry is active. While we're here, let's activate the symmetry for the other layers we'll use so we don't need to go back and keep thinking about it. Once you are done activating the symmetry, head back to the wrench icon at the top left, to our Canvas tab and edit the Drawing Guide. This time, head to the texts that says Options underneath the symmetry text. There are so many that you can play wit but this time we're going to choose radial symmetry and then toggle on the rotational symmetry. I'm going to select an olive green color. You can select any you prefer. I'm going to use this to create a central stem. The same way that we did before, you can edit the arc if you need to using the edit arc text until those lines connect. Now we can play with some of our double-sided leaves around this wreath on alternate sides. Slowly going up one side and then the other with that heavy light pressure. You will see that the radial symmetry replicates your strokes all the way around the Canvas so that it makes wreath making even more effortless. Now we can head to a new layer, and I'm going to pick a slightly darker green and just add a few random buds to the spaces in-between the leaves using light pressure for the stems and then just a little circle dot for the top of the buds. I'm going to add a few branches and make sure I'm using curved strokes just to add a bit of movement to the stems. I'm going to continue this as I go around and you'll see that the rotational symmetry is going to really help with duplicating this all the way around the wreath. Continue on until you've filled in all the areas that you would like with these tiny little buds. Now for a bit of color, and we're going to select a reddish brown and add a few floral shapes around the edges. These are very abstract, so don't worry about any detail. It's just adding a pop of color to liven up the wreath. Continue all the way around and your rotational symmetry again will help fill in that wreath. We can head back to one of the greens and just use some curved lines to connect these to the central stem with light pressure. Now there is a reason that we have created them on different layers because now you have a lot more freedom with your color adjustments. I'll highlight each of the layers by swiping to the left and then at the top of the layers panel, I'm going to group them and then I'm going to duplicate the entire group so that we have a backup. I'll deactivate one and show you a color technique with each of these groups. With the individual layers, you can use your adjustment menu and change the hue, saturation, and brightness of each layer separately. Then you can combine them into one layer when you are happy with the changes. I'm going to go through one-by-one and just have a play to show you how you can adjust them. Once you're happy with the changes, just tap on the group and then the text on the left-hand side, choose flatten and it will combine them into one layer. Alternatively, with the other group, if you are happy with the motif placement, you can just tap and flatten the group and then go to your selection menu at the top left, and choose the free hand selection tool to highlight random areas in the wreath. Now you can feather the selection and then adjust just those areas of the wreath to give some visual interest so that even though the symmetry is all the way around, the color variation is not. I would really recommend taking some time to experiment with the symmetry options for leafy wreaths and frames. They are so much fun. When you are ready, join me in the next lesson to learn how to convert these watercolor motifs into clip art with transparent backgrounds. 8. Creating Watercolor Clipart: In this lesson, we're going to learn to create watercolor clipart with transparent backgrounds while still retaining that watercolor texture. This technique can be applied to any of the watercolor layers we have painted. But I'm going to show you how to do it using our eucalyptus layer. First, deactivate any other visible layers and activate the eucalyptus layer or whichever layer you want to convert into clipart first. Make sure to leave the watercolor group with the texture still active as well. Next, head up to the wrench icon, and then the add tab and scroll down and tap the text "Copy Canvas". This will then make a copy of everything that is visible on the Canvas in one flattened layer. Now we want to paste it somewhere. Head to the layers panel and the Watercolor Canvas group and tap on it because we want our copied Canvas to be pasted above this layer. Swipe down on your Canvas with three fingers, and in the menu that appears on the screen, select "Paste". Now when you look at your layers panel, there is a new flattened layer at the top. This is great, but we still need to separate our leaves from the white watercolor background so that it is a standalone piece of clipart with a transparent background. The next step is to deactivate this flattened layer and then head back to the original layer that we painted the eucalypt on and tap to activate it. In our selection menu, head to the automatic selection and tap outside of the twig to select the white areas around our watercolor leaves. This should then turn blue in color to show that it is active. Now we can move our stylists on our screen to the right to make sure that the selection threshold is increased to get right up to the edges of our watercolor painting. If the selection bleeds into the painted watercolor area, slide back to the left until it is just along the perimeter and stop. You may also notice areas of white watercolor texture between the leaves that have not been selected. Pick up your stylus, then zoom in with two fingers spread apart and select these areas just by tapping on them. They will then turn blue to show they have been selected. Now, with this selection still active, I want you to head to your bottom menu and tap on the text that says "Invert". Now only the painted parts of your Canvas should be selected. With our selection now active, head to the top layer and tap on it and press the "Plus" icon to create a layer above it. Then tap on this new layer. On the left-hand side in the menu, select the text that says "Fill Layer", and it should fill this entire layer with an opaque color. We're going to duplicate it once and merge this layer by pinching it to ensure it is fully opaque. Now, tap on it and choose the text "Select", because we want to select the entire area of our painted eucalyptus. Now we can head to the flattened Canvas layer below it, tap on it to activate it, and then do a three-finger swipe on the Canvas. This time in the menu, we're going to select "Cut and Paste" because we want to cut out our painted area out of the flattened Canvas. Now when you look at your layers panel, you can see what has happened. You've cut your painted watercolor out perfectly from the background texture. You can swipe to delete the other layers that are no longer needed. Then you can long press on the tick on our cutout watercolor, which will activate only that layer. You probably still see a white background. But if you go down to the bottom of your layers panel, to the background layer, and untick it, you can see that you now have a perfect watercolor twig and leaves with a transparent background. Now, this watercolor painting can be placed on anything without worrying about that white area behind it. To export this file, head to the wrench icon and the share tab, you'll need to select the PNG option to export it with a transparent background to your file storage. If you select a JPEG, it will add a white background back to your file, so make sure it is on PNG. Now you are done. That's it for this lesson. Take some time to apply this technique on the other layers that you have painted to create transparent clipart files. It may take a minute to get your head around the technique, so feel free to rewind and take a look at the process again. Once you are done, name your files in your file storage so that you remember what your motifs are. Then join me in the next lesson for final thoughts on your class project. 9. Applications and Final Thoughts: Thanks so much for joining me in this class. I hope that it has encouraged you to make your own watercolor assets for graphic design. There are so many ways that illustrators can use illustrated clip art. You only have to look at websites like Canva, Design Cuts, Creative Market, or Etsy to see creatives using graphic elements as part of their creative businesses. In everything from stationary to social media posts, or my personal favorite for motifs for surface pattern design, for fabric, or for print on demand accessories. I would love to see your version of watercolor leaves and reads. Take a moment and share your class project. You can do that by taking a screenshot and uploading it to the class project section just below this video, feel free to add your own spin, perhaps a new color combination, or use your clip art to frame a quote that you love. I cannot wait to see where your creativity takes you and sharing your projects helps to inspire others to make these techniques their own. Also, if you have some time, please leave a review of the class or comment in the class discussions if there is a technique that you would like to learn in an upcoming class, it really does help me improve. You can also follow me here on Skillshare at Cardwellandink Design to be notified of any new classes. If you are on social media, you can always tag me at Cardwellandink. I love to reshare students projects in my stories. Have a great day and happy creating.