Extracting Watercolor Leaves in Procreate for Illustration Sets

1. Welcome to the Class!: Welcome to the class, Extracting watercolor, leaves in procreate. In this class, I show you one of the most important skills you need as a digital illustrator. You learn how to cut out all kind of graphics you draw in procreate and save them with transparent background. This is one of the most important skills because it allows you to actually sell your illustrations if we haven't met yet. Hi, my name is Munia. I'm an artist, a graphic designer, and a teacher. And I love creating illustration sets for sale because they are evergreen and can therefore sell forever. In this class, I will show you how to look for inspiration, create a color pet, and draw a leaf in procreate. Once done, we extract it together with a watercolor background. In the end, you will know how to draw elements appropriate with a PNG back road and sell them as digital illustration sets. Join me now. 2. Installing Brushes and Cavas: Let's start by opening our brushes and the canvases from Lisa Grants Collection from Aquaria. When you have opened procreate, you just click here on Import. Then you navigate to the folder. I'm not my cloud drive and I put it here in a favorite, I'm here in the equal folder. And then I have brushes and canvases. I already have added the brushes. Let me just open that. You see for me it's not downloaded. If it looks the same for you, just tap on it and it's downloading to your ipad. Once you have done, just tap on it and then you will install it into Procreate. Yes, it's easy. Once done, you will also take care of the canvases. Let's go into the folder of the canvases. Here you have three actually those canvases are all different. This one has really rough paper and this is slightly different. Just let's pick one of them. You see, I tap on it and it's downloading. It's thinking with the cloud and downloading now to my ipad. Once that is done, it will open in procreate and then it's imported. It's importing and opens when I zoom in. Now you see there is still structure but actually just one. Let's use the other one as well. So you see the difference. I go to import, again, go to my folder canvases, I just download number three. You see the difference between these. You see that works quickly. And again it will open, procreate, and you can see the difference between these two canvases. This is actually watercolor paper, but this one has really rough edges, while the other one is a slightly different. Then if you use the one or the other, there is also a difference how the brushes turn out. It looks much different when I use the rough one than the other one. Let's start with this rough one. I now go here in my layer of palette on draw here. It's important that you always draw here. What we do now is we use whatever color. It doesn't really matter which one. Let's close that. I use one of the green tones from the nature's best color palette. You can find that pad as well, you can actually use it. Now, we will start by having a look at the aquaria brushes from ser. I just go into the folder and you see all her brushes here. These are actually all the watercolor brushes. While when you scroll down, there are also some stamp brushes. Before you start with whatever brush that you use, it doesn't really matter. You can, of course, use another one as well, but you should get familiar with your brushes. And to do so, just pick one and start drawing a little bit. Think we can concentrate on these four, but we might also use the blending brushes. You never know. But I just say, okay, for now, I'm going to concentrate on this when I draw. Now, let's see when I do that, how it looks. This is more like a sketching brush. You see it has, when I press, it's looking a little bit like a pencil. I really like that one for sketching. I'm just getting rid of those three and just keep those. I have a light one and I press down now and pull it up again. You see what happens. It's slightly different. Okay. What we do now is we draw with each of these four brushes here on the paper. Then we print it out and write the name of the brush next to it. Why I do that? Yeah, well, when I'm drawing, then I can easily check out which brush I need. I have a reference next to me. I really like that because they are so different. Let's see that one. When I now draw with that one, you see I just go very lightly over it. But when I press down, now you see the difference. Yeah, the whole thing is covered, but I also push the color for and back. Let me do that again. You see the harder I press down, the more I push the colors to the edges, that's an effect I can use. But even this brush can be used for different things. Now, I'm just going slightly over it. You see how different it looks from this one? When I press really hard, I'm pushing the color to the edges. If I don't do that, I have a nice area with the color. Number three, the round brush here. Let's see how that looks lightly going over it, you see it's different. The edges, Yeah. They are not precise. They are really ground and softened and when I know press down, I get a filled part here. You see the edges are still blurry. Yeah. You never know where you can use that Number four is now a brush. So let's see how that goes. No, it's not a covered area here. I go slightly over it and now I press hard. I still get different edges. Now you see these edges and you see these ones. You can see the difference here. Yeah, now you have a selection of brushes actually included in the aqua real set. From there we go, I'm going to show you how that looks printed in second. And then we go from there to print these. I first need to explore. So I go to my ranch icon and I say share. Then I save it as a jack in my icloud drive. I can just send it to the printer even from here, but I'm going to just save it. And then I'm going to print it downstairs because the printer is too far away. You see it's not selected here, but you might have that option. Let's cancel that. Say again J. Then I say Save files, and I go to my Aqua Real folder. It doesn't really matter right now, press I just put behind it, 01, just my first dry. I can click Safe. Now it's in my Ico drive and I can print it here. You can now see my printed version. You can really see very well that here is a structure of the paper still included, this normal paper. Just a printer paper printed it and then I wrote this next to it. Now I have a reference and can put it down. I always know which brush to use. 3. Getting Inspired: Now let's go to procreate, and let's look for some images. For inspiration, we want to draw a leaf. I think it will be something like that leaf leaf. Let's search for that. I just type in watercolor leaves and see what appropriate comes up with. I already have actually a board. I just keep pinning there so I can get some inspiration. Tap on the image. Click on Safe. Now you just choose the board. Interesting thing, I have saved that. If you don't have a board yet, you go here to Create board and then you put everything on it. Let's pick another one. Maybe I don't have that one, you never know. Okay, let's say watercolor leaves and it there. Let's keep pinning and get some inspiration here. Just tap with your finger on it and you see I already have that one as well. I don't know why they show me those again and again, but Okay. I just scroll down a little. I have more chances to find something I don't already have pinned. Okay, once you have enough, I now have enough because I already had some. I go to my board and I just pull that up and everything I have pinned for this topic is inside. Now, I usually just choose one of them and make a screenshot from it. As I said, maybe we use something like that. Yeah, I don't know if that is 100% what I want now. I think, yeah, that might look nice. Something like that. Okay. Once I have something, I think could work. I just do a screenshot. I press the two buttons here, and then you see something is coming up. And I can just save it again to somewhere on my Pintersboard. What I want is I want to have the image preceding it again, and now it's here on the bottom left. I tap on it, I make it smaller and just cut it here. Then I send it from here to Pinterest. I click here on this arrow and I say Pinterest. It's now being sent there. When I now go to Pinterest here, it's now in my gallery. Let's go out and you see here is the image I have just picked. Now we're going to create a color palette from that. 4. Creating a Color Palette in Procreate: Now let's create a color pet from this image. You might think, okay, there are just a few green tones, but no, there are a lot and infinite green tones here on this sheet of paper. Let's go here to the button with the color. And make sure you are here on disk, because then you can navigate to palette here on bottom right. If you are somewhere else, you can always go to the pallets here. Then you click here, the plus time. Then you can say, Create New Palette. You could actually just load this photo into it and create a pale from that, but then you have no influence on which colors are shows. I usually do it manually. I like the result much more. I usually create my color palette and give it a name, like in this case, watercolor leaves. Then we can start grabbing colors. What I do is I just start with whatever leave here, tap in here. And then you can already see that there is a color. What is in half of the circle is the color I'm picking. Maybe a dark green. This one you see just here in this little part, there are a lot of different green tones. I grab this one. Once I have it, I go in here and just tap into my palette and I have saved that color. The thing is now I don't have the hex code here. I just have the colors, we can live with that as long as we use our palettes here in procreate. But if you want to use them in Photoshop or Illustrator or whatever program, you would have to create another color, pelt, and pick the colors again. It's a little bit difficult, but it works. Let's keep going here. You can do that with your finger as well. I just throw out again what I don't like at a later time. For now, I just pick all the colors which come up here. I see what I need at a later time. You see these things are repeating here. This one is the same, and this one as well, it's more a pattern. But for us, it doesn't matter. We still get enough green tones. It's not about copying, it's about getting inspiration. Let's just, let's go through it and see what we use, what we need from that. I think that's enough. Of course, you could go on and just collect many more green tones, but that should be fine. You can always export the colors. If you click the three dots and say Share, you can save the color held, But for now, we just need it here. Then we can start drawing. 5. Getting familiar with your Tools: And now I can start drawing here with one of the colors we have just picked. What I want to do now, I just pick a dark green so you can see it better. What I want to do now is get a little bit of exercise with our brush. I know that sounds strange, because actually I guess you want to draw now. But it's always better to get familiar with the brushes you have, because then you can draw much better and easier later on. Let's go ahead and I just show you what I usually do to get a little bit familiar with it. Just first brush, you see, I have just picked the first brush, it's on 100% now you can of course change that, but I think it gets very small. Then I just draw some lines. I just press down, lift up, Just get a feel for the brush. You can do just dots and some lines here you try that, you sometimes miss a dot. You can see some waves and see if that brush changes. It actually is pretty nice if you want to use it for sketching, we just can do that. Just go there when I zoom in. Now I can see that when I start lights light and looks like a pencil and then I press down, it gets wider, just as if there's a lot of graphite here. Yeah. You see that's a perfect brush if you want to sketch something. Okay, next. We don't want to spend too much time with that, but you want to do that. You want to go through your brushes. You see now I press hard. Do you just want to go through your brushes and try them out? Really get a feel for them? You see when I just make a dot, it's very light. Can I get a dark dot? Just when I go over it again and again. The six Zac? Yeah, I'm pushing the color with me. You see When I go over it, I'm really pushing the colors. Yeah, just try it. Okay. Let's go to brush number three. How is that different? Just a long stroke. You see it has its edges but they look like they are bleeding with water. And that was the biggest difference from this. We can just try again and go slightly over it. The other one, number four, where we have these rough edges, let's compare them. Press hard. Now you see what happens is the same as this one above, you see here is very dry. The edges are very dry as well. Personally, I like this effect, but it always depends what you want to archive, of course, but with this brush, you can do a lot. Yeah, you see it looks different. However you press your brush, of course, I go very lightly over it. It looks much different. Yeah. Compare this one to the dual tone brush where you have actually two tones, this white one and the darker one. Where push the color from left to right. You see, I just have a paper now with all these brush strokes just for you to get a feel for it. It's important. I know it sounds silly, but it's really important to get feel for your material, for the brushes, for the tools we use. 6. Adding more Depth by Shading: Let's do another quick exercise. And for that, I'm going to clear the layer. Just tap on it and say, clear everything is done. We keep saying you on draw here, draw from there. First thing I pick a color because I want to start to draw a leave before I actually draw the one we want to extract. I'm just drawing here one leaf. Maybe better with a sketch brush to show you what you can actually do with it here in the program. Just draw something. If you hold it down, you see it gets straight. I just want to draw these leaves. If you hold something like that, it doesn't work. Let's go. It can look like this because we are filled with color. In a second. Yeah, Just keep going. I could now get in my image so I can check that out. But for now, it doesn't matter because I just want to show you something that should be a fine what I can do is fill these leaves now with the color. If I do, you see it goes over the edges. It doesn't work. I really need to fill it out. Just go here and draw over it. I can, of course, use another brush. Why not? But I will just use that one for now and just change the brush in a bit. Don't forget, nature is not perfect and so are not your leaves. Just keep them as they come out. It doesn't really matter if you find something like this which has to go, we will take care of that in a second. Because I want to show you how you can use all settings you have in your brush and use it also for your eraser. Okay. Now I have some settings here. I have the pick brush. I have the size of the brush and the opacity. When I now tap on the eraser, you see what happens. It takes everything over. I erase with the same brush I have drawn. Let me get in here and I can just delete what I don't want be picky, because actually you are creating for designers. It's better if you are really picky about whatever you see which shouldn't be there. Designers need that for the project. It needs to be 100% good to have the files, the files they use. You can always go back and fix that later. It's just for now, because I want to show you something that's okay. I'm going to use another brush now. Maybe now that I know which brush I can use, I just need to switch to another one. Because now I have a feel for the brush and I'm going to use another color, brighter one. Then I just draw over it here. Let's see how that looks. I just give it a bit more tone here. Can also do that earlier before you actually start filling everything, but I like to have that on top. Once you have done that, you can even here your wet brush or this bleeding brush maybe then go over it. You can't see the edges anymore. If you go here you see I'm just bleeding that in. Which I like, especially for what we do in a second. Just follow this exercise is important because if you draw the real leaf, you will use this technique a lot. Okay? For now, there is a pixel, I want to get rid of that. That's my leaf. Now I want to pretend that the light comes from here. Here, these edges should be a little bit brighter than those ones for now. How do I do that? I go to my selection tool here, make sure I have free hand selected, then I just select a little bit of the leaf here. Then I go to feather, which is important because we don't want to have rough edges, but smooth them a bit. Smooth it a little, not too much. And then we go here to the adjustments and say saturization and brightness. Then we can play, then we can change the color. Actually, you see when I now go here for and back, it gets another color. What I actually don't want, I just want to have it a little bit brighter. Maybe with a more U. No, not too much. Yeah, maybe something like that. It looks a little bit different. Let's go back in here and do that again. Now I use this here. Oops. To select again. Free hand should be selected, then go in and uses a bit again. We go to satuzation brightness and make it a little bit brighter. It turns out very natural. Don't you think you can do the same the other way, you can do that a little bit darker as well. Back to the selection menu. Then I use the bigger leaf selected, all Fe. You see it's always the same process then back here and now we need it a bit darker. You see now how it comes in. That looks good. Okay. We can actually do that now with all of the leaves, but I will leave that for now as it is. I just wanted to show you how that works. Now, we already have our leaf. We could make that bit stronger if you want to, but basically here is a little bit more light than there. It looks good. 7. Extracting the Watercolor Leaf: Okay. Now let's cut out the leave. Well, it's a little bit complicated actually, but once you get hold on it, it gets easier with time. Let's start by checking if all layers are on and they actually are here, the box has been ticked. That's all fine. Make sure you are on here. Layer I walk, you know, through it step by step so you can't go wrong, Just follow along and we get it done. Once you are on the draw here layer, click on the wrench icon here, and then click on, then say copy canvas. Once done, you have copied your canvas, of course. Now you go back to your layers palette. Then you click here, Paper and Effects, because we need to have a layer on top of it. Now we need to add it there. We do that by swiping with three fingers and say paste. Now you can see that we have a new layer here which is called inserted image. Now we go back to the draw here layer, choose a selection tool which is here on top. Make sure you have now set it to automatic. You also need to put it on Ad I tap somewhere. Let me go back to show you that was correct, but I want to do it with you together. Have automatic and add on. Then you tap here into the white. Now you see that everything turned blue outside of the leaf, which is fine, we just need to find. Now I just doom in. I go with my apple pencil over it. And then you see here on top the threshold, if I go to the right, you see everything inside is selected as well. We need a sweet spot where just the leaf is selected and nothing else. Actually, just the outside is selected and not the leaf, because right now you just see everything on the outside selected. We change that now in a second by clicking here on Invert, Because then our leaf is selected. Now we go here, back to our layers. Click on inserted image and click on the plus sign for a new layer. Then we tap here on the layer and shoes fill. When I now turn off everything else, you can see what has happened. We have now a leaf inside that layer, but it has no texture. Now we duplicate that layer and merges with the one under it to make sure it is a pack. Just because of that. If you feel what's not necessary, well, you don't really need that step. But I think it's better to have things covered. Now we click here on the thumbnail once again. Then we click Select to select the entire everything which is on the layer. You see it turns again into that color. Everything is now selected. We go back to the inserted layer here, just tap on it to mark it. Now we stripe over our canvas three fingers and we say cut and paste. That happens when you have turned off a layer. Let's click cancel and do that again. I just turn on the layer and then say cut and paste. Now we have a new layer. If we now turn everything off, you can see that we have cut out our leaf. Let's zoom in. I really can show you here is a texture on it. What is not so nice now is are the edges here. We can fix that, but we need to be super careful here at this point. Because, well, if you are not, you're killing these nice water color. Because right now, it looks a little bit as if the edges are just crash here. If you now go over it with the eraser, you might, yeah, cut that out, maybe make sure you are on the right brush. I choose the sketching brush on top, then I click on the eraser tool to take the settings over. You see now I have sketch brush, then I can erase a little bit, but let me do too much. You see what happens, the nice edges again. Let's go back. That is, when the selection is not 100% you might want this effect or you might want to delete it. That's of course, up to you. Make sure you go over wherever you feel it is needed. Take your time now to clean up your leave. Or maybe you say, okay, I really like it like that. I just want to have, maybe this here should go. That's up to you. If you want to sell it to designers, of course you should actually have a high quality standard. Because as a designer, you want to use what you have bought and you don't want to spend your time fixing it. Otherwise you could have just drawn it on your own. Make sure you spend your time wisely by really cleaning up your elements. But once done, it's fine and we can export it. To do so, we click here on the wrench icon once again. Then we click on Share. Now we need to share it as a PNG image. To do that it means we have a transparent background if we don't do it and if we turn on the other layers and maybe share it as a J pack, well then you don't have this transparent background. Make sure you pick here PNG. You actually could even use a PSD file. Here's the Photoshop file. Then you would keep all the layers and could work on it further on your computer. But we just want to use PNG here and export it. Now I can say safe, safe to file, and save it. Now here in my icloud drive, wherever you want to save it is fine. Just go there. Save. Click here, Safe, and it's there. You can also add another name, of course, just type into it and maybe just say leave. It's there. Just click Save and you're done. 8. Your Project: Congratulations, you are done. We have just finished cutting out our leaf here, a watercolor leaf actually. In procreate you have seen it's not just an easy task because of the rough edges it has here. But you can totally do that with these little, let's say, tricks. Actually, it's not a trick, it just how to tool. But now you should try it yourself. Go ahead, draw something, a leaf or whatever you want and then extract it here in procreate. Once you are done, please post your result and so we can all see it and see what you have come up with. I really hope you enjoyed the class and thank you.