Easy Procreate Watercolors: Holiday Edition

1. Intro: Did you know that winter holiday art is one of the most sold themes in the art licensing world? Imagine creating beautiful holiday icons in watercolor without even meaning a paintbrush or Impropriate. O, I'm Sandra Mahia and I'm a freelance illustrator and pattern designer, and my art has been used in a variety of licensing products. I've also taught illustration and pattern design to over 130,000 students and today I want to share with you my easy digital watercolor technique Inpropriate the holiday edition. Although you're creating winry icons like pine tree leaves, pensias, mistletoe, candles, and more perfect for the holiday season. By creating individual elements, you'll unlock endless possibilities because this gives you the ability to repurpose them for various designs, maximizing both your time and creativity. And the techniques that you learn here can be applied to themes all year round. You'll learn my easy watercolor technique, how to add watercolor paper textures to the icons while keeping a transparent background, and how to assemble these into greeting card designs, one of the best selling products for artists like us. Plus, with the individual icons that you create, there's so much more that you can do like designing wrapping paper, tags, or even product packaging. We'll cover each step from setting up your canvas to installing the brushes and color palette. Then we'll paint the festive elements one by one so you get to really master the technique. You'll get everything you need. My essential set of watercolor brushes, the sketches, my procreate files with the base shapes already done, and the color palette, all to help you create amazing designs. Just bring the Pcreate up, your iPad and an Apple pencil, and you're ready to create. Even if you're a total beginner, don't worry, I will show you every step of the process so you can follow along. At the end of this class, you'll have all these elements plus two greeting card designs and the skills to create so many more. Join me and let's get started creating holiday magic in Procreate. 2. Class Project + Supplies: In this class, you'll be creating a set of holiday icons and then assembling them into a greeting card or two or however many you want. You can follow along with my elements and my designs, but remember to use these only for educational purposes as I hold a commercial license for them. So don't sell anything with them. Or you can create your own icons and compositions with your favorite seasonal element. This is your chance to get creative and create elements that feel like you. For supplies, it's pretty simple. You just need your iPad with the Procreate app installed and an Apple pencil is highly recommended. I'll provide you with my basic go to watercolor brush set. The sketches, my Procreate files with the base elements in them, and my color palette. If you want my extended Procreate watercolor brush set plus a lot of other freebies, just sign up to my newsletter to get them for free. Grab your iPad, download the class assets, and let's dive in. 3. Installing the Brushes + Color Palettes: I'm going to show you how to install brushes and color palettes in Procreate. It's very easy. You just go to wherever you have your assets set. So I have mine here in my dropbox, but you can have them on your iPad, Cloud Drive, wherever. So the brushes always end with brush set. So if you just tap on it, it should import directly into Procreate. When you go to your brushes, you'll see it up here, Sandra's watercolors, that's the set that has just been imported. If you imported just one brush, you'd have to go to the bottom of your stack and find the imported brushes and there you would find them. But if it's a set, it will be up here. And now we're going to go to the folders again and I'm going to install a color palette. Those end with swatches. It's the same thing. You just tap on it and it will import directly into Percrd. When you go into your swatches, you will find it usually at the bottom of the stack, here it is. If you want to work with Devon, you just press here, set it as default, and now when you drag your palette out, that's the one that's going to show there. Procore has made this super easy, so that's how you install your assets. Now in the next lesson, I am going to show you how to set up your canvas. 4. Setting Up the Canvas: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to set up your canvas so that we can start working. I usually work at 12 by 12 " when I'm going to create my artwork or patterns, but for this class, I have made the files at six by 6 ". In case you have an iPad with less storage, that way you can import my files and use them because if they're larger files and you have a smaller capacity iPad, then you won't have as many layers to work with, and then it might be hard to import some of the files. So I recommend you work bigger if you can, but if you can't, it's okay. Work with what you have. When you go into Procreate, you can see that you have all your files here. I like to put my files in stack so they're organized. The way you create a new file in Procreate is you press plus here. If you have already set your presets, you will find your preset saved here. I already have mine here, but I'm going to show you how to create it. If you press here, you'll be able to create a custom Canvas and I like to give it a name so I know what it is. Six by 6 " at 300, for example. And here, I'm going to set the size. You can set it in pix inches whatever you want. So let's say six by six, and the DPI is very, very important. You have to have it at 300 so that you can print this later and it will look crisp. This is the minimum resolution you should have. And then you see how many layers I get Ba it's a small file, I get a lot of layers, but this will vary depending on your iPad. If you don't have too many layers available, don't worry. I'm going to show you work arounds. And here in the color profile, these are the most important settings. I always like to work on this one because for some reason, CMYK inappropriate, leaves the colors very muted. So I like to work on these ones and I take into account that the very neon colors, especially the pinks, the greens in RGB, if I have to turn that into CMYK later, those will become more muted. So I don't use very neon colors if I know that I might have to change it into CMYK later. But now a lot of companies are using RGB to print. So it's not so problematic as it was before. So this is what I like to work in. And those are the only things I touch here. So basically, I keep this here and I only modify my dimensions. When you click Create, it will create your Canvas. But if I go to the gallery again and I press here, you'll see that that preset is saved here. So the next time you're going to create a file, it'll be there and you just have to tap it. Okay, so in the next lesson, we're going to start working on our elements. 5. The Technique: In this lesson, I'm going to explain the technique that I like to use to paint digital watercolors. There are many ways that you can do this, but this is how I do it, and I found that it's really great to paint digital watercolors this way because I get more control, and that's how I like to paint my watercolors in a controlled manner. You can start sketching your own flowers or your own elements. I recommend creating one element per canvas. That way, you'll have like six inch or whatever size you made your canvas. You'll have very big elements that then you can use in other compositions and not just a page with little tiny elements. Bigger you have your elements, the better because then let's say you're creating a piece of fabric and you made it very small, then it's going to have to be very small printed in that piece of fabric. But if you have it big, then you can choose to create a big print or a small print. So having bigger elements gives you more options when you're going to produce stuff with your artwork. So even if you're creating art for stickers, I would recommend making it big because you'll never regret making the art bigger, you will regret it making it smaller if then you need it for something big. So here, you'll find your first layer and you can choose whatever brush you want. I usually like in sketching the six B pencil, and here you can start creating your sketch. You can be as realistic as you want. Make it as loose as you want. I like making my sketches very loose so that they flow more naturally. And here I'm just creating very basic shapes for the petals for my pincetia. I'm not looking at any reference. If you wanted to be very realistic, I suggest you look at reference. I like my art very stylized. So I did look at some Poinsas before. I went to the garden center and looked at a lot of them because it's Christmas time here, so Pin SDs are out. The other option you can do is I have provided all the JPEG files for my sketches. And the way to import that is you go here to the actions panel, and in ad, you insert a photo. I'm inserting a photo because I have it s to my iPad already, so here it is. And when you tap here, you release it, and then you have your sketch. I'm going to delete my sketch, so swipe left and delete it. And let's start working with this one so that I can show you the technique. When you import the sketch, if it's a JPEG, you'll see that it has a white background. Let me add another layer and drag it underneath. And let's choose another color. Actually, let's drag this palette out and let's choose this color. So if I draw here, you won't see what's happening because this sketch layer has a white background. So the way to work with sketches that you in ported this way is to tap here on the end, reduce the opacity a bit, and set this to multiply. That way, the white becomes transparent and you can see what's happening underneath. Let's delete this layer. I'm going to create a new one and drag it underneath again, leave it press and drag it underneath. And here, I'm going to take a brush that is solid. So in calligraphy, monoline is my favorite brush for this. And using any color, I'm going to start creating some solid shapes that we're going to use later to add the watercolor effect too. So if you have just one leaf, for example, you do that and then you fill it in with color. Sara stem. And that's it. Even if you have more leaves, it's very easy. But when you have elements like flowers where things are overlapping, you're going to have to start building different layers so that you go from the back to the front. So the way you do this is you start with the element star on the back. So here, for example, this leaf is on the back. So I'm going to trace it, but I don't want to just, do it like this because I don't want to have to be careful when I'm drying these other ones that I'm actually overlapping it. So I'm just going to make it bigger. And I'm going to see what other petals are in the back that I can draw in this same layer because we don't want to have one layer per petal. You can, but that's very unnecessary, and you can add different petals in the same layer. I cannot add this one because this one is overlapping this one, so it cannot be in the same layer. So this one is also furthest back and this one, this one, and this one. So those are the ones that I'm going to add to this shape. So I'm going to connect it, so it's all one shape. You don't have to, but it's easier this way because it's faster to cover. And I'm just going to go around and create this base layer. And now I drop my coloring, and I'm just going to color this spark in because I made that dot and it didn't color, but now I have the first layer. So I'm going to create another layer and I'm going to choose a different color. The colors here don't matter. So now I'm going to see what petals are on top of that one. I would say this one not this one because you see that this one is on top of this one, so still not that one. This one, this one, this one and this one. Okay, so I'm going to create that shape. And I fill it in, and now I have another layer. So now I want to do the same thing, create another layer and choose another color and then see what petals are on top of that layer. So I would say this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one and this one I cannot paint yet because this one is on top of this one, so that one has to be on another layer. So I'll just do the same thing again and paint this one. And then drop my color in. You see, because this shape was separated from the rest, it didn't fill out, so I just dropped this in and no problem. Even if you had to make another layer here, you just drop the color in. It doesn't matter. They don't have to be connected. It's just easier to color if everything is connected. I'm going to create just one more layer for the other petal, choose a different color, and that will be just this petal. I'm going to fill it in. Finally, I have to create the little seeds in the middle, so I need another layer for that. And here I'm going to make my brush a bit bigger, and I'm just going to draw some little dots, basically. And then make it very small and then draw some little lines connecting to the middle. And if it's hard for you to see what you're doing, you can make the sketch even lighter. Just tab here and then make it even lighter. But right now we don't need that sketch anymore, so I'm going to delete it. And now we have all the base colors for our first element. And I started with the most complex one so that you understand how to do it. Now, I'm going to explain how we color with the watercolors. To add a more realistic look to watercolors, you should add a watercolor paper texture, and the easiest way that I found is to create a layer on top. And then if you downloaded my mini watercolor brush set, you'll find that I have an ad paper texture brush, and it's a set layer to linear burn that's very important. So we're going to use that brush. I'm going to make my canvas very small, and I'm going to choose this third color, like a yellowish color. And I'm just going to color over the whole canvas, licked my pencil, and I can do it three times. And what that does is that it gives you a watercolor paper texture. So now if I go here, you'll see that it's very yellow. I kind of like the yellowish look, but I don't want it so much. So if I go to hue saturation, I can reduce the saturation, and then it's less yellowish, see? And it's a very subtle effect. I'm going to tap here again. And now I can go and set this to linear burn. And you'll see that it kind of ingrains itself into the color. Here it's normal and it's kind of just standing on top, and here it's linear burn and it's kind of more subtle. You can also try different blending modes and see what you like best. They all eat different results. So it's all a matter of preference. Linear burn is very subw. You can also reduce the opacity here and change how it looks. Like, see here with AD, you can see it more in the darker areas. With linear burn, it's almost invisible in the darker areas. So just choose the effect you like the most. I'm kind of liking the ad, actually, so I'm going to leave it there and reduce it a bit. I think that's enough, and that's how I'm going to work in my collection. So now that we have that color paper texture, I like to lock that layer by swiping to the left so that I'm never painting on it and making a mistake. The second thing we're going to do to prepare for painting is watercolors are usually paint in white watercolor paper or a little bit toned, and that is how I like to work here from light to dark. So we're going to give all of these a very light layer. You could give it a white layer, but then you're not going to see where your layers are or what you're doing. I am going to go to each layer, swipe to the right with two fingers and turn on Alpha lock. You'll see that a checkerboard appears in each layer. So when I tap here and I press fill layer, you'll see that that layer will all be filled with the color that I chose, which is this light color. And now there it is. You can barely see it. I don't know if in camera, it's even harder to see, but you can sort of see the shapes. Now, I'm going to go to this layer that had this little leaf here, and first I'm going to show you how the technique works. Okay, so let's create a new layer here just so I can show you how these brushes work. I have created three brushes. These ones are basically the same. The only difference is that this one is rough and this one is smooth. So let me show you. See I'm pressing hard here and here I'm pressing very softly. Very softly kind of blurs the edges if I go back in there. And then this one is the same, but the edges are smooth. And again, I'm pressing hard there and softly here and I can blur the edges. And then I can press hard again. So see, they also have a paper texture ingrained in them already so that if you turn off this, it still has some sort of texture. So you can choose whatever you want to use or you can use any watercolor brush you have. You don't have to use mine. Finally, the water blend is just like adding water, and it just blends out the color. And because we have that texture applied on top, you can still see the texture on the blend. But if we turned off that texture, then you would see that it just smudges the paint. So it doesn't look as good. This is why we have our watercolor paper texture. Okay, and that is how they work. And now let's go to this layer that has a leaf here, and I'm going to very, very fast show you by using this ultimate fill rough brush, how you can do it. So I like painting with a lighter color first. And then going into darker colors. And then, I'm pressing hard and then soft. So I'm creating these watercolor effects. If you want, you can paint with a smaller brush size and just paint in a more controlled way. See I'm going like, softer here, and then here I'm going harder and then harder here, but I'm kind of smoothing out everything. So that the watercolor effects are not so harsh. And I am adding darker and darker colors as I go. It can also add some darker colors to the edges like this. Just make it very small and go around the edges, darkening some areas and then smoothing it out. That way, it looks more like a watercolor effect. You can even choose a darker color and make it smaller and use this brush to add some details. Or as we'll see, as we paint our ponsas, you can use it like this, like pressing hard and softly to add some more textured details. See? You can add little dots and even grab some other colors and then, like you're making this more like an autumn leaf. And in watercolors, it's always really cool to touch different shades of colors and add it to your art because when you're painting traditional watercolors and your paintbrush touches like a blue, then it kind of gets mixed in, and that gives it a more realistic look, I think. But this is all a matter of preference. And this technique is the one that we're going to use to build all of our icons. So it's very simple. You just have to be very playful with it, but because you already have the basic shapes set, then you don't have to worry about controlling the watercolor brush as much. And now you can have fun because you're not going to go outside your shape. So now that you know how to do this, let's move on and go to our first element, which is the spruce. 6. Blue Spruce: And and and in this lesson, we're going to start with the blue spruce. You can create your own elements or you can work with my procreate files where all the elements have the base shapes created. So let's start with this one. So here in the file, you'll see that I already have my paper texture. I have set it to linear burn because this way, it's easier for you to see the base shapes, but you can set it to whatever you want. And I have my elements here. They're all in one layer. You can also create each one in its own layer. But for each of everything, I have created it in one layer and I can separate them later. You'll see that the Alpha lock is activated. If you haven't activated your Alpha lock, just swipe to the right with two fingers and you'll see the checkerboard. That means that now we can paint on top of this and just paint on our element. So again, I'll be using the ultimate fill rough for everything here, and you can use whatever brush you want. And I'm going to go here to the palettes and take them out. And I want to be using the traditional Christmas one, so I'm going to set that one as default. So every time I pull my palette out, that's the one that comes out here. So let's start with this, and this is going to be very basic. So I'm just going to create some shades of green, again, starting from the lighter one. I'm going to make my brush bigger and just sort of add a base shade going darker in some areas, which means I'm pressing harder on my pencil and lighter on other ones. I really like these effects like this. So I have smoothed it out by pressing softer in some areas, but I'm leaving these effects in other ones because I think that gives it a more realistic look. And what I'm going to do is just start adding a bit darker and darker areas. And these elements don't need too many layers because they're very basic. So I'm just going randomly and making sure there's variation in the tones. That's what I'm looking for. And then some of these effects. So I can also press like that once and you'll see that it creates that effect. So if that's something you like, that's a great way to do it. And I always like adding a tiny bit of another tone to it, as I said before. So maybe a tiny bit of blue here in some corners. I don't know. I think that just makes it more interesting. And I'm going to do the same with these ones. But if I start with a different tone in the background, see there we started with the yellow. Here I'm going to start with the blue, and as I add the greens, you'll see that it creates a totally different look. Like, the tone is different. You can do this if you want, or if you don't want, you don't have to. Just play around with the brushes, play around with the sizes, see what effects you can get that you like, and that's how you find your style of painting because this is mine, but you can't find yours. See, they look different. This one has, like, a yellowish undertone, and this one is more blue, more cold. I'm just going to go very fast in these elements that are one layered because again, they don't need as much detail. If you wanted, you could go very specifically and make your brush very small and then, for example, see this leaf that is overlapping this one. I could go in and darken the back one like this. Just to create that differentiation and make it even more detailed. Same here. Say, this one is in the back. You could do that. And if you find it hard to control where your brush is going, you could use a selection tool, make sure that free hand is selected, and just select that lead the part that's going to be darker, and then with your brush, you can go in and add a darker shade here. And then the selected. And that way, it makes it easier sometimes. So it can be as detailed as you want. You can also make this brush very, very small and then add some details to each leave. Just try everything out and see what you like best for your style. And I, for example, like this style more because I like my art to be very, very detailed, but you might like something more simple. So just try different things out, see what works for you. And now we have finished our first element. So in the next lesson, we're going to paint some pine leaves. 7. Pine Leaf: In this lesson, we're going to paint a pine leaf. It's very, very simple. It is very similar to the one before, but we need to create more leafy elements for our compositions later. So again, I have this file. I have my leaf here, my paper texture, and I'm going to grab my ultimate field rough brush. I'm going to create this one. I want this one to be very dark. You want to create your elements in variation. Don't make them all green, for example, unless that's what you're going for, but give them some variations so that when we create a composition, everything doesn't look just the same. So create ones that are darker than the other ones also so that you can create contrast. So I'm going to go with these bluish greens and because I want it to be very dark, I'm not going to start with the lighter colors. I'm going to start with a medium range one, and I'm going to make sure that my brush is very. I'm just feeling most of it in going lighter in some areas here, see. Even having that creamy base color gives it a bit of interest now because now we're having different shades already. I'm going to go to the darker green and just kind of darken these areas here. Then even darker. I see that I'm leaving some effects like this. And then I want it's kind of boring. So I want to try this orange and don't be scared to try things. If they don't work, it just erase them. That's why this is digital art, and it's so amazing. I'm going to try this orange here. I'm going very lightly just to see how it looks like with the stem painted kind of brownish. Maybe add this color. Try things out. Sometimes you might get things that look good. Sometimes you won't, but you have to try. I think that looks good, but I think the leaves need a bit more green. They're too blue. I'm going to add some light green areas here. Yeah, I like that better. This is a very simple element and we're done. Then in the next lesson, we're going to start painting some berries. It 8. Berries: In this lesson, we're going to paint some berries. Now you know how to paint those one layer, very simple leafy shapes. Now we're going to go into a file that has two layers. So you'll see that we have two layers here. This one is with the berries because they're on top of the branches, and this one has the branches. I always like painting from the back to the front. So I'm going to go to the last layer, which is the stems, and I'm going to start painting those. And those are going to be very, very basic. They're going to be this dark green. I'm going to make my brush a bit bigger. And you don't have to pay too much attention to these tiny little details, but it can create these effects by pressing farther away from the branch, with that, or you can have your smaller brush and just do this. I want them to be very, very dark underneath each berry. So it's like they're casting a shadow. So you just go over several times, like lift your pencil and then go back over it, and that will darken the color. And then maybe I'll just add a tiny bit of lighter green, like, all over. I then go back with the darker grain. So it's not so light in some areas. So that's how it looks like. But because they're very, very small shapes, I wouldn't pay too much attention to them. You don't need them to be so detailed because you're barely going to see them later when you use them in a composition. Unless you're making stickers, for example, and then this is all that it's going to be, then go in more detail. But work smart and know that if this is going to be part of a greeting card and this is probably going to be used smaller and with other elements, then you don't have to waste so much time in this. Because sometimes you're very perfectionist and we want everything to be absolutely perfect, but sometimes it's not needed and that just weighs us down and slows us down. I'm guilty of that. But I've learned now to be more I don't know, easy going with my art and just have fun. Here, I'm going to go to the layer with the berries and start painting those. I'm not just saying to create sloppy things. I'm just talking about knowing where to put your energy and your timing, something that actually matters. So with the berries, I'm going to start with a very light pink. And let me show you here. The theory for round things is that it goes from lighter and then these sides get darker, so you can get the sense of volume. You can do this. With these brushes, go like that and then go darker and once you've saturated that color so much that it actually doesn't go darker, you can go to other shades and do the same thing. You don't have to use the whole range of colors. I just have it there for variation, but you can jump around them. See, you can have your berries like that. That's a very graphic look. You can use your water blend here don't just do this because then it looks very ugly, touch in certain areas to blend those colors so they don't look as layered and you might like how that looks or you might just want to go back in with another color and then darken the whole thing even more. En and maybe you like that even better. I do. You can use white, for example, if you want to make this light. Show more. And then add another speck of light if you want to make them very shiny. That's basically what we're going to do with all of them. You could do each one like this, finish it, and then go to the next one, but I'm going to show you a faster way of working. You can leave this lighter area here and then press harder here and then just do this for each one. I'm basically just giving each a base color and establishing where I want that light area to be in. Then I'm going to go to a darker color. And press harder in some places and don't blend it so much if you want this more watercolor effect like that. Like an experiment to see what you like best. And see this way, it's much faster because I'm not jumping in between colors for each one. I'm just like patch drawing them. Then I can go in with my water blend. I don't like using the water blend that much, but there are some areas that are to define all those lines here, I don't like that, so I can just use it like this. Again, I'm not doing this, I'm just pressing ones. You can even make it smaller if you want to be more precise. I'm going to go in and add some white here. There it is. I think the only thing it's missing is like one tiny bit of like other color. So I'm going to grab this yellow and make my brush big and add a tiny bit of yellow to some areas. And see that I don't know if you can see it, but that gives it way more interest than this. Like, it makes it less flat. So I'm going to do that to all of them. So more darker. I think they need to be a bit brighter red. What you can do is you can go here to adjustments and it can go to hue saturation and you can make them a tiny bit more saturated. See I'm going to go t. You probably don't want that to be so saturated, but I'm going to saturate them a tiny little bit. You can reduce the primes if you want to make them darker, or you can make them lighter this way. Just because they're berries, I want them to be more saturated and I think that makes them pop a bit more. They have now you know how to paint things with different layers. Now I'm going to move on to something similar to this, which is the mistletoe. 9. Mistletoe: In this lesson, we're going to paint this mistletoe, and this is going to be very similar to the last element. We painted because it also has two layers. So the first one will be the leaves and the stems and the second one will be the berries, and this time we're going to paint them like white. So let's start with the leaves. Let's make our brush bigger and paint these ones in a very greenish tone, not bluish, but green. And make sure to follow along with any color palette you want. This is just a suggested one, but you don't have to use it. See that I'm pressing hard and then lifting my pencil a bit just to soften that out. So it's not just like that, which could be an effect that you want, but it's more subtle. I'm going to make the brush smaller and make sure that here I also add some darker areas under the berries. And I'm going to add a bit of bluish hue here. And I have my brush set to small, like, smaller than the first layer so that I can control the better. I press the very lightly here just so it's very subtle. I think these leaves need a little bit of detail, and again, that is my style. So I'm going to grab this dark green, and I'm just going to add some veins to it. Here you can also press lighter here. So it gives it a variation of tone. Then try this and see if I like it. No, I think that's too much. I'm just going to leave it with the middle line, but I'm going to make it a bit thinner and less dark. Yes. I like that much better. Now I'm going to go to the berries. And now with the berries, I want them to be white, not totally white, but whiter. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go to that layer and choose my white and tap on it and press fill layer. Now I have a lighter base to work on. But I can't see where they are, I can imagine they're here. But if you want to see where they are, you can go to your background color and make it darker like this gray. That way, it will be easier to see what you're doing. Now we can go and start adding these very light colors I just want to add a tiny bit here because I want to leave this part mostly white, but add some yellowish shadows. You can also use this grayish here to add a bit more depth like that. And then add a little bit here on the border just so we can create some dimension. And if you like them like that, you can make them like that or you can make them even yellower but I'm going to leave them basically white and just have some shadow here. I'm going to do that to all of them using this gray to add some sort of shadow that you can barely see can go in with the darker one if you want a bit more. Then you can go in with the yellowish shades. Okay, I think that looks good. I'm going to go and make my background color white again, and there we have some mistletoe, and now we're going to go to the next lesson and paint some IV leaves. 10. Ivy Leaves: In this lesson, we're going to paint some ivy leaves and these are very simple. They're just in one layer, but I'm going to show you how I add more detail to my leaves and how you can create some color changing effects. Here I have my paper texture and the layer where I'm going to be painting on, and I'm just going to grab my brush and start painting these apes. I'm going to start with the light green and paint them all like this. I'm just pressing hard and softly and leaving some areas unpainted so I can create some watercolor effect. Now I'm just going to start going darker, again, you can be as realistic as you want or make it very stylized like this. I'm going to reduce this and I'm going to add some details with the very dark green. And I can add some it'll spots. And I can go into the borders and some darker areas. Now I'm going to add a tiny bit of blue. I want to variate the shades a bit more. What you can do is go to the selection tool, make sure that free hand is selected, I'm going to go and select some random areas. Of this leave, Let's do it one by one. And here, I'm going to feather it out. That means that the border is not going to be crisp, it's going to be softer. So once I've done that, I can go here to the adjustments, hue saturation brightness, and I can change the saturation, see I can make it more saturated and the brightness. See that's the part that's selected right now that we're changing. We can make it lighter or darker. But I can also change the hue. This tool is great to give it a bit more interest. I'm going to change it to a brighter green, just a tiny bit there and now release it. Then see it looks more of a watercolor effect as if you had blended in different colors. I'm just going to do that really fast to the other two and just have some areas where I'm going to do it. I can click there and then select on this one, too. I'm going to fetter it just a bit and then go here to use saturation brightness and I'm going to change that here a bit and just release it. That's another way that you can create color variations in your shapes. We're done here. In the next lesson, we're going to paint some poinsettia leaves because we're going to paint some flowers later and we're going to need some leaves for that. 11. Poinsettia Leaves: In this lesson, we're going to paint some Poinceia leaves, and we're going to be creating some different details. We're going to make this one some shades of teal, so I'm going to start with this color and just do the same thing, fill it in. And I want to make the sides a bit lighter and then the middle a bit darker. So I'm going to start going darker than just adding darker shades to the middle. I want these leaves to be dark in general. I'm going to go darker than I want to be bore. I really don't like this flash of color here it's too evident. I'm just going to go with my water blend and make it a bit bigger and blend that in a bit. Same here. Then I'm going to continue adding some darker colors. I'm going to darken the whole leaves and then just darken the middle a bit more. See I'm pressing very, very softly here. Hard and then soft to kind of blend the sides in. And then hard again here. Great. I think that's enough. And now I want to add a tiny bit of yellowish green just to the side. What I'm going to do with this one that is different from the ones that we've made before is that I'm going to add white details. You cannot do this in watercolor unless you're using wash or acrylics or a white pen, but you can do it here because it's digital and this brush works for light colors also. I am going to actually take this very light green tell color and use that to create my details. By varying the way I create details, I also create variety and interest in the final composition. So you won't see it now, but you'll see it once we create a composition. And here, if you don't like these areas that overlap and look very, very digital, you can just go in with your water brush and make it small and kind of smooth those out. In that way, it looks much better. And now I'm going to go and add the details to this one. Blend those in. I'm just tapping lightly. That's great. Now I'm going to use my selection tool and I'm going to select half of this leaf, tap the circle to close it and then half of this leaf here. I'm going to go here and in curves, I can change also the lightness and darkness. See, I want to make those really dark and then I release here. That's another way that you can create differences in the tones in your elements. In the next lesson, let's stop creating some foliage for a bit and we're going to paint a Christmas ball. 12. Ball Ornament: Here I have my Christmas ball, and I have created two layers. So in the background, we have the ball and the string, and in the pop, we have this little thing that holds the ornament. As usual, we're going to start with the back. So I'm thinking I want this ball to be gold. So I'm going to start with a very light color. And I'm just going to create like lines here. Now I'm just going to start adding more yellow to it keeping those lines in place. I'm pressing harder in some areas just to create some contrast and interest. Especially down here, I want to create darker areas. I'm going to go in with an even darker shade. The paint in the top at the bottom. So it's darker. This will create some volume. I'm actually going to go in with a bit of dark red and do that here too. And now I'm going to go in with this light yellowish color and just fell it all in. So the white lines are not so dark. And finally go in with this yellow and add some more defined lines. And I'm going to define the lines a bit more. I press hard there, and then I press softer here to bring it out. So these lines too thick. I'm going to select some areas here in the bottom. I'm going to feather it a bit and then go here to the curves, and I'm going to make them a bit darker and then release. Now I'm going to do the same thing, the leg with the middle. Here, I'm just going to create some shine Make sure you scatter that a little bit. Now I'm going to go here to use saturation and increase the saturation a bit and then go back to Kirk's and lighten that up so I'm going up and release it. If you think the lines are too white, you can just go back in with some more yellow and a bigger brush and just soften them up a bit. Then I'm going to go in with a very light color and actually create some highlights this way also. You can make your bolt shine by creating these little stars like this if you want. Like little shining areas where you can make, like, little white dots like sort of glittery. Then ones darker, well, lighter actually, but more evident. That way you have a shiny sparkly ball. You can add more of these as you want. You can add more lights, more highlights. I think I like how that looks. Now I'm going to concentrate in this area. I'm going to make a little shadow for the part that hangs the ornament. I'm going to go in with this orange and just make a shadow like that. Now we're going to paint the string. That will be a very basic color. Let's just choose this dark color for the string, or you can also make it golden. So just add some darker areas to it. Here, actually, I want to go into this ornament and use my rays very small and I'm going to erase this part here so that it looks like it's actually holding the ornament. Those tiny little details that make it look more realistic. Now I'm going to paint this part. For that part, I think I'm just going to go very basic with gray. As if it was, like, kind of, like, silver, but not fly and going to make my push a bit bigger. A bit bigger and darker here. And even with a darker gray, like that, I just wanted to be very simple. Now with this very light color, just add some highlights, maybe with white. Maybe like this to accentuate that round area. Maybe here. Yeah. And then they're very obvious there, and I don't like it. So I'm going to go to my water blend and just basically touch a bit, like taping a bit to blend these sides in. Great. That looks much better, and we're done with our ball. If for some reason, you think it's too orange now and you wanted more yellow, you can also go to the selection here, select the whole ball. You don't have to fetter it here because we're changing the color of it all and go to hue saturation brightness, and we're going to change it to be a bit more yellow. There a bit more saturated. A a tiny bit brighter and just release it and that's it. You can add decorations ball, patterns, whatever you want. I'm going to add a lot of decorations with the flowers and leaves to it, so I want to keep it simple, but it can do whatever other decorations you want. In the next lesson, we're going to paint some candles. 13. Candles: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to paint some candles. So again, I have created two layers. So the back one has just a little wick, and then in the front, I have the candle and then the flame. So let's paint this very simply. So let's start with the wick and I'm going to make that one like a grayish color. That one very simple. Now I want to keep the cream color of the candle. I'm just going to add some shading with this color. Not too much, here on the sides so I can create some volume. I think that's enough. And here, I'm just going to paint this yellow and orange and red like this, and then some red. And then some more yellow because that's too red. So I'm going to some more yellow. But I want it to be saturated so it looks like it's on fire. And maybe here you can see some of that light. Bouncing off here on the candle. Okay, great. We have one candle, but what if we need more candles? Repeating the same candle is very obvious and doesn't look good. What I'm going to do is repeat the same candle so it's fast, but then change some things so that it looks different and nobody's going to know that we just copy it and paste it. I'm going to go here and I'm going to slide to the right and these two are selected and I'm going to group them, and this is going to be candle number one. But now I'm going to swipe to the left and duplicate this group, so we have another candle. I'm going to tap here and move it to the side. And I want to make this candle longer. I'm going to release that and then I'm going to go to the layer that has this body of the candle and I'm going to select it and click here so I can transform it. If I move this around with the uniform on, it will also change the width and I don't want that. I'm going to tap here on free form, and I'm just going to drag it down so I make it longer, but I'm keeping the same width. So now I release that and I have a different candle. But this is giving us away because it looks exactly like this one. I'm going to go to my layers and you'll see that this is Alpha lock because we were painting on it. I need to turn that off before I use the liquefy tool that I'm going to show you, which is super cool. Just swipe with two fingers to the right, the checkerboard will disappear, and now I can go to the selection and select just this area and then go here and go to liquefy. Here you'll find push and we're going to use this to move this around. Right now it's moving the whole thing around because this size is too big. I'm going to make it smaller. That way, I'm going to be able to push this part around and then push here and change this shape. Here, push it here and you can make it even smaller for more precise pushing. Now I can release here and you'll see that it looks like a totally different candle except for the shading. What I'm going to do is just turn the alpha lock on again with my brush, I'm just going to add a little bit of shading somewhere else. I'm going to soften this. I'm going to use the water blend. The blend is differently. There it is. It's a totally different candle. Let me move it. I'm going to touch the group there and move it up. It's beside this one. And now if you place them like that, you will know that you did that and it didn't take that long. This is very useful, especially if you have to paint 12 different candles, then you can paint like maybe two or three and then modify the other ones, and that way, it won't look as repetitive as if you had just copied the same 112 times. I actually even like this even better, so I can go back to this one, turn up the Alpha lock, select the flame and go here to liquefy and kind of move this one around a tiny bit. And revisit, and that looks better. So now we're done with our candles, and in the next lesson, we're going to start painting some little white flowers. 14. White Flowers: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to paint some white flowers. So remember what we had to do with the white berries. We had to go to the background and change its color. So I'm going to make this color. And then I have three layers here. This one is for the little seeds in the middle. And then this one is for some petals, and then this one has the back petals. So I'm going to make these two layers white. So grab the white. Tap on the layer, peel layer, and same with this one. I don't need to do the same thing to this one because those are going to be yellow anyway, so it doesn't matter if they're beige. So let's start with the back petals. The way I'm going to make the shadows here is with some of these grays and with these very light yellow colors. Let's see which petals are in the back, these two. I'm going to focus on this one first. My brush is not too big. Here I want to be very subtle because I want to keep it mostly white. I'm just adding some color here and some color here. Enough to make these back petal differentiate from the front petals. But we want it to be basically white. I'm going to grab this one to add a tiny bit more shadow and I'm pressing really softly. I think that's enough. So now I'm going to go to the front petals and do exactly the same thing. Start with this one and add some very light shadows here. We're just adding enough to create some sort of alum. Here, I want to keep it very light, so it's very differentiated from the one in the back. I'm not going to go and paint to the border. I'm just painting here inside the petal. Again, see I'm leaving this area very white. If for some reason you painted over it, you can just go back to the white and then ing that back out again like the white. Now I'm going to add a bit of gray. I want to add some more here in the middle. And just a little bit here on the rest of the petals. You don't want to add too much gray because then they'll look like they're muddy, and that's not what we're after. And now I want to add some details. So I'm going to try this very light gray, and I'm going to press very lightly, make my brush small. I have it at 2% and see how that looks with some veins. Just so that they're not so white. See if you like that. Find some style of adding details that you like or leave them as they were. I went to do the same thing to the bottom layer. And finally, I'm going to go to the top layer and paint the middle in. So I'll make my brush bigger and I'll start with this yellow and see how that looks. I want to go lighter, so I'm going to go lighter here. And this is I call it yellow, but it's more like an oranging. I want to go even darker in some areas. I like that, but I don't think this is looking good, so I'm going to go back into those petals there and add a bit of this orange here. I'm pressing really softly. Maybe it'll press a bit darker here in the middle. And I think that brings it together even more. So I'm happy with it. And what I'm going to do is speed paint these other two because I'm going to use exactly the same technique. And here I'm batch painting them as I taught you, because this way it'll be much faster than doing one by one. So at the beginning, just do one by one, but once you get the hang of it, just batch paint them, and you'll be done in no time. Mm hmm. And we're done. Now you know how to paint white flowers. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to paint a pink and white un seria that has those very pretty textures. 15. Pink Poinsettia: In this lesson, we're going to paint a pink pointsia. Well, those are kind of like greenish, and then they have pink splotches in the middle. So this one has four layers, and I'm going to start painting in the back. So I'm going to start with a very light green in all the petals mainly on the outside of them. And then I'm just going to go over lightly, so they're a bit greener. And now the fun part starts. I'm going to choose the pink and reduce the brush size and see if this works. That's too big, a bit smaller. And then I'm just going to start, like, pressing soft and hard and creating these pink areas in the middle. I'm pressing hard in some areas, softer in others. And I'm not thinking too much about what I'm doing. I'm just going with the flow. I'm going to add a bitmrk pink here in the middle. And now I'm going to grab a darker shade of pink and make the brush smaller. I'm going to use si stool and see what happens. And I'm going to create the middle, and I'm not going to the top. So see here, I press really light, and then I press really hard, so that it's very lightly visible here at the beginning. And now I want to create some veins because the pinceas have very visible veins. And you can turn a canvas around if that makes it easier for you to draw. When I'm recording, I don't like turning my canvas around much because then if I speed it up, then you start getting like dizzy, but it's definitely an amazing tool to have. And what I want to do now is grab my selection tool and in each petal select like a little area in the middle. And I'm going to make sure to feather that a bit. Not too much, and go here to use saturation brightness, and I'm going to make that a little bit pinker, just a tiny bit. You don't want to change with colors that much, so that then it doesn't match with anything else in your other elements, but you can definitely lay with them here a bit. And now you tap here to deselect it. And now we can go to the next layer. So go here and we're going to do exactly the same thing. I'm going to start with the green, make it a bit bigger. And this time, I'm going to make the green a bit lighter. And I'm not going to paint the middle just so that the pink can show up being way more pink. So lighter, great. And I'm going to grab the pink, make it smaller, and start making the middle areas. The smaller you make your brush, the more precise you can make these splotches of color. See this one's more precise than this one, and you can do whichever you prefer. I press softer in some areas here, and then harder in other ones just so that it creates some variation in on. Now I'm going to go over some parts in the middle. And if you don't like some of those blends, you can just grab the water blend brush and touch a bit. Make it a tiny bit bigger. You can blend the areas that you don't like. Now I'm going to grab my ultimate filled rough brush again and reduce the size to toe and grab this second paint and do the same. So I'm going to spit this part up because it's exactly doing the same thing, just adding some veins. H. And now I can move to the next layer. Make it bigger, use the green, grade the borders, and now the pink. There are some areas here that I don't like, so I'm going to use my water bland brush and blend them a bit. Great, and then go back to the ultimate fill rough or whatever brush you're using for your details and reduce the size and add the final details. Great. Now, that part is ready, but as you can see, there's not much definition between all the layers of petals. So I can go back to the back petals and I can create a new layer on top and set this as a clipping mask. I'm going to set this to multiply. This way, whatever I paint here, it's only going to show up on top of this because this is a clipping mask. It means that it's clipped inside the shape, and by setting it to multiply, it's going to make the color darker. So I'm going to choose this pink and make my brush a bit bigger, and I'm just going to go like, over these areas where these leaves are overlapping. Areas to make this darker make it subtle, like, soft. So that you start seeing a difference between the back layers and the front layers. It doesn't have to be too much, but you'll see here that it starts actually having depth. It can even go a bit darker here in the middle. And now I can go to the next layer and do the same thing. So I create a new layer. I touch here, set it to clipping mask, and set it to multiply. I'm going to go back to the pink and add some shadows here. I want to darken the middle, too, so that's why I'm going darker here. You can also use this opportunity to darken the middle here a bit more. And now going to choose the darker red. I add a bit more of depth here in the middle. And now I can go on to the next layer and do exactly the same thing. Add a layer, set it to clipping mask, set it to multiply, choose the lighter pink. And here, I'm just going to create some shadows in the middle behind these little dots and darken the middle a tiny bit more. And go in with the darker red and darken this in the middle even more. And now the last thing we have to do is paint the little dots in the middle. So I'm going to go here to this layer and I'm going to paint them with a light green and see how that looks. Maybe go darker with a smaller brush, darken some areas, and even darker in some areas. And there we have it. We have our finished poinsettia. Now I'm going to spit paint a white one and a red one because it's exactly the same process, just using different colors. So in the next lesson, I'm going to speak paint through the red and the white considas. 16. White and Red Poinsettias: In this lesson, I am going to spit paint the red and the white pointsia because I'm following exactly the same process as I did for the last one. I just wanted you to see how I do it. But it's basically the same thing. Start painting from the layers to the front and make sure you have that in between the layers so that it doesn't look so flat. So because this is a white flower, I made the background a different color, and I'm going to make all the layers actually white. Mm So basically, I do the same thing with it for the white flowers. I add some shadows very subtle with this light yellow, and then with this grayish, and I added the details with that same gray. Here I'm going to do the next layer. Now I'm going to go to the next layer. And the last row petals. I'm going to make the middle a bit darker. And finally, these little seeds. I'm going to make the green and just add some darker colors in some areas. If you want to see how that looks yellow, just go to hue saturation and change it. I think that looks so much better. So I'm going to leave it kind of like an orange like that. So release that. And you'll see that again, we have the same problem as before. They're flat in the bottom. Like there's not a lot of differentiation between the leaves. So I'm going to do exactly the same thing we did before. I'm going to go to the layers, add a new layer, set it as clipping mask and set up to multiply, and then I'm going to use this light gray and create some shadows. So I'm going to make this a bit bigger. I'm just going to darken these shadows a bit. Don't do it too much because it's a white flower, so painting white elements in watercolor is not the easiest. I just want to make sure you see the difference between the petals that are in the back and the petals that are in the front. Great. And I'm going to do the same thing for all the layers. Mm hmm. So there we have our white quinceia and now I'm going to paint the red one. I'm going to start with the light red, not the lightest because I want this quincea to be really, really red. I was creating some spots like this, so it gets sort of like a watercolor texture look. And I'm going to add a darker red here kind of in the middle like this. So for this one, I'm doing basically the same thing I did with the pink and green one, but just with shades of red. And for the details, I'm going to create them in this cream color. I and now you can move on to the next layer. Here I'm trying to leave the borders a bit lighter because they're on top of these other petals. That way, it'll make them show up lower and then darkening the middles. I'm doing this very fast, like it's fast forwarded, but still I'm doing very fast because that way, it can be more loose. And then I'm going to go in with the darker And then with the details. And then I just realized I forgot this petal, so I can go back to that layer and just paint it. And this layer. And in this layer, I'm going to add a bit of yellow first, so I'm creating some variation in the tone also. This is another way to create differentiation between the layers. Now I can go in with the red. And again, I'm going to leave some borders that are whiter just to help differentiate more. And here, I'm going to try to create the inside shadows with this red. Deep. More vibrant red than these ones, and then create a bit of the inside shadows with this one, but not as much. The middle, I want to make darker. The final petal. And then for the middle part, I'm going to make a yellowish. And maybe add some green here. Yeah, I think green works better. So I'm just going to add some darker as of green. And now I want to still add some depth to the layers, so I'm going to go do exactly the same thing with the clipping masks. Let's say that you have too many layers now and you're running out of layers. What you can do is you can merge these layers together, make sure they're ready, and then you can keep working on these ones. I'm not going to merge mine, but that's a workaround that can save you. So let's continue. Okay, that looks so much better. So we're done with our poinsas and we're done painting all of our elements. In the next lesson. I'm going to show you how to prepare them to create a composition. 17. Prepping the Elements: In this lesson, we're going to prepare the elements so that you can use them as individual PNG files or that you can use them later in the composition. The easiest way to do this is to keep your original files intact. I have them here in this stack and because they are stacked, I can go here, click Select, tap my stack, and duplicate the whole thing. Now going to press here, I can call this one flat. And I can go into my stack and I have all my files and I have all my files intact in the other stack. I'm going to delete this one because that one was just to learn the technique and you'll see that I have all my elements here. They all have their names, so that makes them easier to work with. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go into each one. In these cases where they're all they have several elements in the same file, I am going to separate them. And I'm going to eliminate the paper texture from the background. What I'm going to do is make sure that you only have one layer for your artwork and I'm going to unlock the paper texture and I'm going to touch on it and set it as a clipping mask. That way, the texture is no longer on the page, it's only on the elements, and now I can merge them. In this case where I have three of these, I am going to cut each one out like this. I put three fingers down, cut and paste, and that one has been placed in a new layer. I go back to the original layer I selected three fingers down, cut and paste, and now each one is on its own layer. What I'm going to do is select them and position them in the middle of the canvas. And now I'm going to go here to the actions in Canvas, I'm going to go to crop and resize. I'm going to crop this canvas. Make sure that no elements are falling off and press done. Now what I'm going to do is rename each layer. Spruce one spruce two. Name spruce tree. Now I'm going to turn the background color off so that I have a transparent background. You go here to the little wrench actions share and here you're going to share your layers as PNG files. You'll see that it says save three images. I'm going to save those three images to my iPad. Now when I go to the gallery, you'll see those three images here and they have transparent backgrounds. We're going to do that with each of our files. Let's go back into the gallery. This one is very simple because it only has one. I am going to unlock the paper texture set it as a clipping mask, merge them both. Then I'm going to go to my Canvas, crop and resize, crop it like this. Turn off the background and share PNG file. Save it and go to the gallery and go to the next one. Here, this one has two layers for the elements. I'm going to merge them together without merging the paper texture. You only have one image and then I'm going to unlock the paper texture, set it as a clipping mask, and now I can merge them. I forgot to rename the past one, but I'll rename this one Brees now I can go here and crop my canvas. Press done. Turn off the background and share here because it only has one layer, you can share layers as PNG files or share image as PNG. It's the same thing and you save and now I'm going to do exactly the same thing for all of them. I'm going to show you here with several elements and several layers. What I'm going to do is merge all the layers first or the images, and then unlock the paper texture, set it as a clipping mask, merge them both, and now I can separate the elements. Again, with the selection, three fingers down, cut and paste, then I go to the other one, selection, three fingers down, cut and paste, and now I'm going to move them all to the middle. I'm going to rename each white flower one, white flower two. Naming them is great because then it will be easier to work with them, white flower tree and keep your files more organized. Now going to crop the canvas. Press on, turn off the background, and we're going to share it. I'm going to continue doing that to all of these canvases and in the next lesson, we're going to create our first composition. 18. Ball Ornament Greeting Card: In this leistd, we're going to create a Coston, and it's going to be a greeting card. We're going to create a greeting card, which is an amazing thing to either produce yourself and sell or have it printed, or you can get your art license for greeting card companies. So usually those cards are 5 " by 7 " in a vertical format. I usually create mine twice the size. So greeting cards usually have a bleed so that you don't make your design exactly the same size, like five by seven because if the cutting machine moves a tiny bit, you might leave a white border on the side. So they have a bleed. So I'm going to create a new canvas. I'm going to call it 5.5 by 7.5 greeting card. And I just make sure this is at 300, and here I'm going to select the inches and press Create. And here we have that file. There's two ways to insert the images you created. You can go here and add insert a photo, and then you can insert your image. And you tap here to release it. Or you can go to the gallery and then find the image you want to bring in. You select this one, for example, you go to the layer and you drag it out, and then with this finger, you go to your gallery and you go into that file, and then into your layers, and you drop it there. So the good thing about this is that it keeps the name of the layer, but it takes a bit longer, so you can do it however you prefer. So I'm going to hide this one for now and I'm going to start placing my ball I'm going to make it smaller and you can make things smaller. But if you make things bigger, they will start pixelating. And if your icons are getting fuzzy or pixelated when you're moving them around, make sure that you go here and you test different methods. For my type of art, bilinear works best. I never get fuzzy edges when I move my icons around. So let's say I want my bolder, I'm going to release it. It's not centered, so I'm going to move it a bit more to the center. And now I'm going to make my poinsettia visible, and I'm going to make it smaller, too. And I think I want to place the ball in the middle and then have some flower arrangement here with some leaves, and then another one here. So I'm going to start placing things there. When you're creating designs, make sure that things look balanced. And what balance means is that if I had this image, it looks like it's heavier on this side because it's too empty here. So if I add this big element here, I should add something here to balance it out. You'll get this sense of balance and composition, the more you practice, and the more you look at other artists art to understand how they handle the composition. I think I want to lower this a bit more, and then I want to bring some foliage for this side. So I'm going to show you another way you can import images. Close Procreate and open your gallery, and then go back to Procreate and drag up here and you'll see your gallery here. So just drag it to the side and you can make it smaller here. And this way, you can just drag elements into here. So I just drug it in. And that is super easy. So now I'm going to rotate it and resize it, and maybe that one there. And I'm going to bring it underneath the flour. And these two might be a bit big, so I'm going to make them a bit smaller. Yeah, that's better. You can also just stand here, for example, if you want to insert a layer on top of the ball and under the leaf, you would stand here on this layer, and whatever you import is going to be imported on top of that. So because I want something behind this, I am going to import this leaf and make it smaller and rotate it I'm just trying things out. I can move things around later if they don't work. Like, for example, this is too close to here, but I can make this smaller later if I want. But I think it looks good there. I want it to be on top of this leave though, so I will just drag it up. And there it is. Now, let's bring another one of those leaves in here. Maybe there. Maybe one of these glue bruises, bring this one in. That looks good there. I want to add one of these maybe to fill in this space because this one is not too dense. Maybe add it in there. But I kind of wanted to be behind the string. So I'm going to release it there and bring it underneath the ball. Yeah, I think that looks better. We're going to do something with the string later. I think that looks good. So now I want to start building this side. So I'm going to add this one and then put it on top of the ball. Now, let's bring in the pink one. I really like how this pink one turned out. Let's bring it underneath everything. Maybe turn it around a bit more. And if this doesn't come as easily to you, don't worry. Like, I do this a lot, so I'm kind of used to my elements and how they fit in composition. So it's kind of easier for me. But if you haven't done this for long or you're using my elements that you're not used to that, then you might struggle a bit more. Just play around, enjoy yourself, put things in different places, different sizes, different rotations, and just have fun with it and see what you come up with. I need more leaves here. So I'm going to make sure I'm under the flowers and just bring in the other leave that we haven't used. If you make it smaller, but you haven't released a selection, you can make it as big as you had it before and nothing will happen. It's only if you release the selection that it will get pixelated if you reduce it, and then you make it big again. Because I'm thinking here, I'm going to need to add a long leaf or something to fill in this area because here, I'm going to add the message. So that's why I put that one there. Well, now let's bring one of this in here. And if you want to turn something, you can also, flip it vertically or horizontally. And then it faces the other way. Let's add this one here. So I'm filling in this corner. I think one of these would look good here. I'm going to bring that one in again. I think I'm going to put some of those white flowers in here. So maybe drag this on in. And I'm going to make them very small. I don't want the background to be white because these lets don't look good there. So I'm going to play with the background later, but I know I don't want the white background so that these flowers can send out a bit more. Let's bring this one in too. Yeah, I think that's looking good. So what I'm going to do now is fix this string because it's so small. So I can go into the ball and I can just leave I'm going to close it now because I don't want any more elements. I'm going to leave my finger pressed here and make sure I am in the same brush I drew it with. And I'm just leaving my pencil pressed. And then you'll see that it's very obvious that it's not like watercolor. So I'm just going to swipe to the right with two fingers and activate the Alpha lock and then go to my watercolor brush and bring my color palette out, and then with a darker color, I'm just going to paint some of it and even go down to this area. And then maybe a bit of lighter year. Now I'm going to set my background. So I'm going to go here and play with some colors here from my palette. Usually, for green cards, lighter backgrounds are better. So I think this one would be good. And just follow your instinct and what you think looks great. And if you're running out of layers, you can merge these. Just add some icons, merge, add some more, merge once you're absolutely sure of the placement. And because we left the bleed and here you don't have rulers to know where the bleed goes to, I have a trick for it, and I have included this in the resources. So just go here and insert a photo, and you'll have this red square here. It will be placed in the middle of the canvas, so just release it wherever it is. And that is a five by seven inch square. So if you just reduce its opacity, you'll be able to see where it goes. Like the bleed. So whatever is outside these lines will probably get cut off in production. So I'm going to select all my elements and group them. And then I'm going to make that group smaller just a bit. I might just have to make this leaf go in a bit. I don't want to go directly to the border either. I want to leave some breathing room because imagine that this is a line where they cut things off. You don't want this touching the cut line. So I'm going to make it a bit smaller. And place it in the middle of the middle square. I think that's good. So I'm going to release it. And now I can go back into my ball, and I should have done this later, drawing the line after I position everything perfectly. But I'm going to show you how to fix that. You just take out the Alpha lock. So I'm just going to go here and with free hand selected, I'm going to select this stop card and just go here and make sure that free form is selected and I'm going to pull up. And I can do this because it's a straight line, but if it was another element that you had to draw parts in, you would have to draw parts in. Like you would have to actually draw it. So I think that looks good. And now I'm going to add my lettering here. So I'm going to go on top of my group, and I'm going to choose this white color and for drawing lettering, I love this monoline, and I like to increase the stabilization and streamline a bit more so that it's easier for me to draw. See, if this was lower, the lines would be a lot shakier. So this is your friend for lettering. Don't put it too much because then it's not very precise when you draw. But I think this is good. So press on. And you can go here and add text, and you can add a font if you don't know how to letter, or you can go to Canvas, turn on the drawing guide, and then you'll have this guide to guide you. When you're drawing, you're lettering. You don't have to be super creative if you're super creative, that's amazing. But if not, you can just put any text there, and if a company wants to license it, they will tell you what text they want there. Or if you're producing your own and then you're going to print it, then you do have to add something. So let's add something very basic. And in another layer. And then because it's in a separate layer, I can change the size of it and the position. And now I can move my happy also. And that's why I like having them in separate layers. So now let's hide or delete that layer and hide the drawing guide and see how we like it. I think we need some little snow dot, so I'm just going to go here and add some little dots. And here I can draw outside of the margins because if they cut a dot, it doesn't really matter. It's not an important part of the composition. Here we have our first greeting card design, and in the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to create one with the candles. 19. Candles Greeting Card: In this lesson, we're going to create a candles greeting card. So we're going to do exactly the same thing as in the last project. I'm just going to create a composition with the elements. I wanted to show you two different compositions, so you can see how valuable it is to create separate elements because you can create a whole range of products from just the same piece of art. So if you want, you can add the template from the beginning. If you prefer to have that in mind from the beginning, I'm going to reduce the opacity a lot, and you can lock this so you're not moving it or drawing on it or anything. And I'm going to do the same thing here and direct my elements here, make this smaller, and I'm going to start with the candles. So I place this one here. And then I want to have two candles there and then have a composition of florals here and then some message here. Again, I'm going to add the poinsas and let's start with this one. We're going to make them smaller. Maybe add this one here. Now split that one there for now and then maybe a the white one. And then the red one. Yeah, I think once the flowers are placed, I can just start adding some foliage in the back. Bring it here underneath the flowers. And I can make everything smaller. I don't have to wait until the end. If I see that everything is too big, I can modify the size now. Actually, I don't want to modify the size of the candles. I think those are okay. It's just these flowers. So just make them a tiny bit smaller. I think that looks cool. So again, I'm going to go here actually here, so I start adding things under the candles, and I want to add some of these magnolia leaves just because they fell in the space so well. These are very dark. So I want to add some of the darkness here, too, because of that thing I was showing you about the balance. So I'm going to bring this one in again. And now I want to bring in this one. I think it works there. Oh, let's use these berries. We didn't use them before. Oh, wow, those are huge. If you're using the same element, make sure you don't do it too many times. And also making it different sizes might help to make it not as obvious. And another trick is, for example, here, I can go in with my eraser and erase this one and this one. Let's actually move it up here. And see, it looks like it's different, but it only took you 2 seconds. I'm just going to go to the eraser again and make sure that I erase this properly there. I think I'm going to make the candles, go up a bit higher just so I fill in this space some more. This one is too close to the border down here, so I'm just going to select everything. Group it. And I'm going to move it up a tidy bit. Make sure it's centered here and it looks centered. Nothing's touching these borders. Perfect. And I'm going to give it a background. Let's go to the background color. I think I'm going to make this one this green. So press on, and I'm going to add my lettering here again. I have my Mine selected. I can close that now and I'm going to turn on my drawing guide. And maybe here I can say Happy New Year. I don't know, people give cards for Happy New Year. I'm going to unlock this and make it a bit darker just so I can see where it goes to and just add my message. Maybe that's too big, but we'll see. Say happy holidays. And now I can that around a bit. So I'm going to make that smaller, and I don't want to touching these elements, so I'm going to place it there and then go to the happy and make that one smaller, too. And now I'm going to turn off my guide and turn off my drawing guide and see how that looks. I'm not happy with the happy, so I'm going to move it and place it here. And I like it much better there. So always be playful with your art, and if you feel like something's not right, just keep moving it around until you get something you like. And now I'm going to add some little dots to this one, too. Just to fill in the space and to create some consistency between both of them because if I'm going to print them to sell, for example, I could make a set out of them, and then they would all kind of match. And I really don't like how this is so close to this. If you haven't merged all your layers, you can go there and still make changes. And there, that's perfect. So now you have two compositions and you can make so many more with these same elements. You can create a whole range of products. Just let your imagination run wild, and I hope you really like this, and it has inspired you to create more art in icons that you can reuse for different products. Now let's go to the next lesson where we're going to wrap things up. 20. Wrap-up: Thank you so much for joining me in this Eazy Procreate Watercolors class, the holiday edition. I hope that you have tons of fun and that you learned a lot today. Now you have a beautiful set of holiday themed elements and two completed greeting card designs. Plus, with the individual elements that you created, there's so much more that you can do like designing wrapping paper, tags, or even product packaging. These skills are going to open up so many creative possibilities. I'd love to see what you create, please share your projects in the project gallery and make sure you leave a review of the class and you follow me here on Skillshare and tag me on Instagram so I can reshare your projects. Also, if you think a friend might enjoy this class, please share it with them so more people can find. Before you go, remember to sign up to my Happy Designers Backpack, which is my newsletter, and I have monthly creative bricks for you and a lot of other previies like my royalty pricing, mini class, cropriate brushes, and much more. Thanks again for joining me and see you next time. Bye.