Illustration for Branding - Take on Any Style

1. Class intro: Illustrators become known for their personal style. How does that work when you work with brands that all have their own unique style? In this course, we're having fun with illustration and breaking apart would actually make something a style so that you can become a versatile and valuable brand illustrator. My name is Malin and I worked as a brand designer and illustrator since 2015. I work with sustainable brands of all kinds of sizes, and illustration is my favorite way to bring more personality to any project. When you're first hired and you're staring at a brand guide, you can feel quite intimidating to know where to start when you're replicating a style. Or if you've been hired to develop a style for a brand and you need to create something that feels cohesive and consistent across different illustrations. How do you actually approach that? My goal with this course is that you'll be able to confidently look at any piece of illustration and know how to break it down so that you can replicate that style. This goes for creating in an existing style, creating your own, or just drawing inspiration from mood boards, and then being able to create something unique. The class project for this course will be to create three spot illustrations, all for the same motif, but with three different separate styles. These illustrations will be a great addition to any portfolio. But I hope they also make the class a little bit more tangible as we go along. I can't wait to see what you create. I'll see you in class. 2. Ways to use illustration: This course is about illustration for branding. I thought we could kick off by talking about some of the different ways that we can actually incorporate illustration into branding projects. This not only helps us be aware of what is possible so that we can be prepared for client questions, but it also can help us promote different products and make suggestions so that we can illustrate more for branding projects. I want to share some examples with you from some of my favorite design books in the workbook. You will also see a page at the end with some ideas for design books that you can explore if you want to learn more about illustration or just get inspired. One of my personal favorite ways to use illustration is through pattern design. This is something that you can add to the inside of product packaging. It can be used on websites, for example. It's just such a playful way to bring in a little bit more illustration without having to actually be something that is at the forefront, but a bit more of a discrete and accenting way. Patterns can be highly illustrative, they can be used with typography, and there's so much diversity and playfulness there. Another application that I mentioned is icon design. And this is a great way to get, let's say, some features of a product or benefits across in very small formats that just have a lot more personality than if you would just have text. Another way is through packaging design. And this is a great way to stand out on the shelf and be recognized as something that is very, very different. It can also be perfect for setting the tone. If you have a product that is very organic, you can have more organic illustration styles. Or if it's very modern, you can have something that is a lot more modern. Another great application is ads. Because people are so used to seeing photography that using illustration as a way to just bring a little bit of something new is actually a great way to catch someone's attention. Next up is merchandise, and this is something where it could be anything from a promotional item to something that is worn by their staff. Day to day items like T shirts or tot bags for example, are something that we can see really commonly be used for branding merchandise. Of course, we have to talk about websites because websites are a perfect place to put illustrations. And they can be anywhere from a main hero image to spot illustrations that bring a lot more personality. Although there are tons more examples that you can explore in your own time. The last one I want to mention is reports, because we design quite a lot of annual reviews and other items that are promotional in a sense, but are also a way for them to summarize the year, for example. These are perfect places to incorporate things like infographics or illustration as a way to break up that monotomous text. 3. Mediums: Someone has been drawing my entire life. It is a little bit easier for me to be able to see what tools someone have used to create an illustration. I thought it would be really helpful if I show you how it looks when we illustrate with different tools and techniques and mediums. I'm going to grab some of my art supplies and we're going to have a look at what type of texture and effect that those different techniques are creating. Let's go through some different painting techniques and different mediums. The first one I want to share with you is a simple watercolor one, just because I think that it's one that we probably all know about. What we can see is that we can see the texture of the paper through it. We're able to actually have quite a lot of impact on how much of the color we see and how faded it is, by how much water that we add. By adding water and working our way through this, we can actually impact how the color is laid out, but also how thick the color looks and see through the color looks. That's water color, one that a lot of people are familiar with. But next up we have something called quash paint. Quash paint is basically like a watercolor paint, but it is a little bit thicker so that you have a little bit more coverage when you're working with your illustrations. Quash paint works really similar to water color in the sense that you can impact how thick and thin it is by how much water you add. If we add a little bit more water to the side here, we're going to be able to see that we can blend it out. It does work similarly to watercolor, but as you can see, you can get a very solid look with quash that is a little bit more difficult to achieve with watercolor alone. What's nice about quash is that you also get a lot of that texture through if you want something that has a bit more texture but a medium between watercolor and something very solid like acrylic, which is something that we're going to have a look at. Now, acrylic paint is great for when we want to have those really solid areas. It's great because it dries very fast. If we want to go over different areas, we're able to actually do that very quickly with another color without having it smudge so much. If you're using something like oil paint, for example, you would have to wait sometimes weeks, before the paint fully dries. But with acrylic paint, you get a very thick coverage and you also get something that you can paint over very quickly. In fact, if we wash our brush that we use a different color. I bet because this is paper, we could basically paint over this with a very different color right away. And not really have that much smudging here. We've got a very different color, let's give that a try. And then we can see that we can paint straight over it without actually having any issues with it blending together. Acrylic paints are great for projects when you want to be able to work pretty fast. Next up, I want to show you how it looks when we use color pencils, because this is a technique that is quite underrated. I think the great thing with color pencils is actually how much you can control the depth of the color. We can use a very faint pressure and get a very faint color, or use a very strong pressure and get a very rich color. This is great if you want to go over shading, if you want to do different techniques on top of each other. There's so much flexibility with color pencils. There are also ones where you can actually use water on top of them, that's something you can experiment with. Next up, I want to talk about line drawing using a ink pen. This is perfect if you're doing things like portraits and you want to do stippling. For example, if you want to work with very fine lines and you're tracing something, ink line pen is a really, really good strategy for that. Then we have colored pens and we've got anything that is a marker. Basically these are great if you want to create a lot more texture in your illustration. And these again, you can control how colorful it is. Not as much with pressure where you can call the thickness of the aliens with the pressure. But if you go over it multiple times, you'll get a different thickness of the color or a different opacity. That's something that is really flexible with colored pens. And then lastly, I want to talk about crayons. Ons are something that I think we maybe associate more with kids, but it's actually a really lovely strategy to use a really lovely medium because it really picks up that texture of the paper. Again, how much of that texture we want to come through. We can use a very light pressure and get almost all texture. We can use a very hard pressure and get a very full coverage, or go over it again and get a very good coverage. They can be a little more tricky to blend together, so it's good, be good for color blocking, but a little bit more tricky if you're trying to layer them on top of each other because they have this waxy finish to them. They can be a little trickier to put on top of each other. Now here comes the really fun part. I really like when you play around with illustration. And you're practicing your skills to mix these different ones together. For example, a great base is a watercolor, and then you could use something like a crayon to illustrate on top of it. And you get these different techniques, merging. And you're seeing where they actually merge, where they don't merge. Can try it with the ink line pen for example. So we can pretend that this is maybe a person and we're going to put some legs on them, or a bird. Maybe you can start actually playing around with these different textures and starting to get a little bit, still a little bit wet, but you can start to get kind of an idea of how these different things can work. The bottom line is to have fun, be playful, and experiment with different techniques. And I hope this help break down a little bit what to expect from different mediums that we're going to be having a look at. 4. Tools and setup: Which tools that you choose to use are very much up to the requirements of the project, but also your own preferences and working style. If you work in print, there are a couple more things to consider like lines and bleed. But if you work in a digital medium and it's intended for a digital use, being able to export as a Jpeg or PNG is usually most of the things you need to consider. I think a lot of us default to working purely digital, but remember that there's lots of illustrators who work in a physical medium like water color or collage, for example. And then who scan their artwork and either just keep it as it is or you can even go into let's say, Photoshop and Illustrator and then make little tweaks afterwards. The tools should help you not be a barrier to your creativity. That said, let's have a look at some practical things to keep in mind as you're creating that will help you avoid some really common mistakes. The first thing we need to consider is color profile. When you're first setting up your document, you need to choose either RGB, which is for digital use, or CMYK, which is for print. If you're working with a branding client who needs their specific brand color to be represented exactly when you're printing something. They might also ask you to work with pantone colors or the PMS system. Next up is artboard size. If you work in a tool like Adobe Illustrator where you're working with vectors, which means that your artwork is scaled to any size without becoming pixelated. Your artboard isn't as important as it is when you're setting up rasterized artwork. If you're working in a tool like Procreate or Photoshop for example. If you're working with print, I suggest setting up the exact artboard size that you've gotten from the printer as their description. If you're working in digital and you're working in a vector format, you can set the exact artboard site as well. If you're working in a rasterized format like Photoshop or Procreate, I like to set the artboard two or three times sizes bigger than what the final artwork would be, just to make sure that if I need to scale it up for a different illustration in the future or something else happens, I have a little bit of leeway to work with there. Talking about tools, here are some of my favorites. I work mostly in Adobe Illustrator and in Procreate. Adobe Illustrator is perfect for creating that vector artwork. And when you want to create artwork that feels very digital, you can use the pen tool and the pencil tool to create really beautiful, crisp lines, which is perfect if you're creating something that feels really modern. I also like to work in procreate. Because procreate is like drawing directly on a piece of paper has a very similar feeling. Me being someone who grew up always drawing. I have sometimes a hard time connecting that experience of to working straight on my computer. If you want to use Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop for that matter, and you want to work with a drawing pad, there are lots of options, but they can be quite pricey. Have a think about which is the best for your budget and for your working style. I already mentioned procreate. And it is definitely my go to choice as long as I don't have to scale it up. Procreate is working with that rast rice format, just like in Photoshop. But it has so many different brushes, so many different quick commands that you can work with. I find it incredibly user friendly. It also only has a one time payment, which is very low compared to Adobe products where you pay every month. You could do things like save brush properties, for example. So that every time you're working on a new illustration, you can go back to those exact brush settings that you had for your last project and keep that consistency for that style. The same procreate also lets you do stop motion animation. If you want to work with very simple ones, you can just use Procreate as it is. But they also launched Procreate Dreams recently, which is a much more extended version if you want your illustrations to come to life through animation. You also have Adobe Fresco and Adobe Photoshop, which are both great options. Fresco is like a mix between procreate. It's that very same experience of drawing on your ipad, but it works with vectors, just like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop. Most of you are probably familiar. But it again, creates that rast, rised, pixelated artwork. You need to keep in mind the artboard size that you're working with. Okay, so now that we know a little bit more about tools, let's jump into actually looking at illustrations and what makes up the style. 5. Mood and Themes: I thought it would be helpful if we looked at how to break apart a style and see what actually makes up that specific style. We're going to have a look at some examples together and we're going to try to answer these questions. Keep them in mind as we're looking at these illustrations. How does the illustration make me feel? Who do I think the illustration is for? What is depicted? Are there people, animals, objects, or other focal points that set the tone? Is there movement or a sense of energy in the piece? Where do I think this illustration would live? Like, would it go in a magazine Or would it be on a website, for example? Let's break down the style of this illustration Here we're going to ask ourselves those specific questions that we had before. How does this illustration make me feel? I would say it makes me feel happy and a little bit cozy. Maybe you have all these items that are related to autumn might make you feel a little bit that seasonal really cozy, Autumn feeling. Who do I think this illustration is for? I would say this illustration is either for a kids book or maybe a magazine for like younger women. Perhaps it feels very much in the Kai, but not in the very bubbly sense, but a little bit more towards that cozy feeling. We've got a lot of items like knitted items, teas, and it would be for someone who would really enjoy maybe reading a good book. Someone who enjoys sitting inside and doing self care. Maybe like having cosy candles on having a nice cup of coffee. What is depicted, are there people, animals, objects, or other focal points? I would say that the main focal point is the character, the bunny here. We've got a cute bunny character. We've got not two super complex details, but it still adds little details here. And we've also got all these other elements around it where we've got, let's say, the little items that tell a story about what the theme of this illustration is. Is there movement or energy in this piece? I would say mostly, no. But we do have little items. Like we've got the liquid here moving, we've got these little sparkles that makes it feel a bit more dynamic. And we've got things like the book, for example, being partly open. All those things could indicate that there's a little bit of movement going on. And lastly, where do I think this illustration would live? I think this illustration could be a desktop wallpaper, for example. If it was broken down in a slightly different proportion. I think it could be a great illustration for a situation like a cozy magazine. Maybe like a garden magazine or a kids magazine, for example. It could also be a spot illustration if they wanted something that fits within next to text. Because that could work really well if it was only the bunny. I think it could work well for a kid's book. It could even work well the way it is now for a kids book, if it was as a way to tell a story. And all the things that are happening in the story is summarized like let's say the first page of a book to set the tone, for example. Let's have a look at a second illustration style just so that we can start seeing the contrasts here. How does this illustration make me feel? This one makes me feel very happy. Calm, a little bit whimsical, very creative. Who I think it's for. I would say this illustration is probably going to be living on a website or a social media account where you've got very creative people, people who are into maybe digital illustration or digital creation. Because we've got digital styles here because we've got all these vibrant colors. We also, I think, have something that's quite energetic what's depicted. We've got one person here, but I would say that although the person is a focal point, the flower is just as much of a focal point. We've got this very whimsical, magical feeling around it. Is there movement and a sense of energy for this one? I would definitely say yes, because we've got the layering of all the different elements, makes it feel a bit more dynamic. We've also got this flower almost opening a little bit. It's definitely not tons of movement, but you've got little things like the butterfly, for example, moving that direction of the leaves or these different items coming out. All of that is going to contribute to making it feel a little bit more dynamic. I touched upon this, but where would the illustration live? I could see this be on a website, home banner, for example, or as a spot illustration, or let's say for a blog for example, to break up the text. Because it is so modern and digital looking. I guess it could also be used for like a T shirt print, for example. It could be the basic foundational illustration for a mural, for example. I think this is where we're really starting to get into application. Because this illustration being so clean and not really having any texture, that's going to work really well for something like a mural or more print for let's say a T shirt because it's going to be easier to replicate. Now that we have a good idea of finding the mood and the themes, let's have a look at the techniques used. 6. Techniques: In order for us to be consistent with the way that we illustrate, we need to be able to analyze the techniques of an existing illustration style. This is just as helpful if you're looking at a mood board, for example. And you want to be able to replicate the mood or the style of an illustration, even if you're not replicating it from a brand guide. We're going to go back to those illustrations that we had a look at just a moment ago. And we're going to do the same thing and answer a couple of questions, but this time about the techniques. The first question is, what medium do I think the art was made in? This can be a little bit more tricky to know now that we have a lot of digital brushes and things that replicate, for example, watercolor or collage effects. But we're trying to go for the look of it, even if it was created digitally, but it looks like a physical medium. We're still just trying to get what that technique looks like, if that makes sense. Secondly, have they used a certain brush or a technique? Does it have texture? For example, how is shading or gradient used? What's the color palette And what level of complexity is there To make this a bit more tangible, let's jump back into those illustrations that we had a look at for this one, we're now going to look at the techniques used. It's a little bit of cheating because I made these illustrations. I do have the answers for them. But we're going to have a look at how you would approach this. In this case, we can see that we've got texture, we've got some shading going on, we've got a little bit of different colors going on, they're quite muted. This could be created either digitally using brushes that have texture, but you could also see something like this being created with, let's say, crayons. You can see in the texture here. Or it could be created with guash, for example, if you've got a bit of a thicker brush or a bit more of a dry guash texture when you're painting as we've seen, we do have quite a bit of texture and we also got shading, so we've got little areas that have a little bit more of a shadow on them. We can see that gradients are not something that we're noticing here, but we do see how different colors are used. Let's say how this color inside of the mushroom is darker than the outside. And then we've got a layer of shading as well. There's a couple of different techniques here are used to create depth. The color palette is very warm, a little bit muted. We've got these nature colors. So we've got like green and yellows, a little bit of pinks, and these different brown tones very nature inspired, which feels suitable for the illustration. In terms of the level of complexity, we do have some areas that are a little bit more complex. Like we will have little lines or little details, but we're not going into like a hyper realistic type of style even though we are adding little details that bring out the personality of the artwork. Now compared to this illustration, I would definitely say this feels very digitally created. You definitely could get a lot of this type of effect if you're doing, let's say, mural painting. If you're doing painting with very, very precise things like if you're using a type of ink that is going to be very high coverage but because we're not getting any texture whatsoever, I would say this is feeling pretty confident this is a digital illustration in terms of the level of details. We do have some, but it's quite big areas of one solid color and that is going to help us get that quite digital impression as well and also a very colorful impression. We don't really have any shading or any gradient going on, but we do have things like having a darker color on the inside of the flower, for example, or the inside of the shoe here. But other than that, we only really have one solid color used. The color palette feels really happy. It feels very artificial. Like if we compare it to the last illustration, it felt very natural, inspired and like you were in the forest. In this case, we're really getting this a very unnatural color palette with really bright colors. So now that we know what to look out for, let's put this into practice and start actually replicating some illustration styles. 7. Creating a reference: Now that we know what to look out for, let's start practicing our illustration skills and put that observation into action. In the workbook, you will see this page with three different illustration styles for each style. There are four prompts for spot illustrations around hobbies. We can imagine that these spot illustrations will go in a magazine mixed in with text to create a more interesting layout. The class project is for you to create the fourth illustration for each of these three styles, the one called cooking. Before we start illustrating, it can be helpful to break down the existing examples into more simple line sketches. This will make it easier to start on the new ones since we can easier see the way that the style is structured. To do this, I just pop the illustrations into procrate and lower the opacity. You could do this in any program that you use. Then I add a new layer and grab a dark color and a sketching brush. You can then start marking out the focal point. This is often a key object or a person, for example. I just make really rough outlines to get a good idea of the layout. Then we can mark out any interesting directional flow of the illustration and add in other larger details. Lastly, is there any really obvious shading or if there are details we want to remember, but we can add them in roughly as well. Now that we have these three sketches, I'm going to turn off the layer with the finished work and just look at the sketches. I can make this layer a reference and make it smaller. Then I add a new layer and we can start sketching our own rough sketch. 8. Example - Sketching: I'm going to illustrate the gaming illustration for Style One so that you can see how I approach actually replicating a style. First, let's work on a rough sketch. So let's try to create the gaming illustration for this style. This is another illustration that we've got for the camping one. If we just have a little look, we can see that there's some texture in the actual brush that we've used. We've also got some shading going on. We've got little details like the flowers, quite muted colors. Then we've got this little guy here, the little sun. We definitely want to incorporate, I think, some characters in the gaming illustration as well. Let's hide this and go and create the sketch. I'm just going to go and grab a dark color so that we can sketch. With that, we're going to grab a slightly smaller brush. If we're thinking about what we want to incorporate, I want it to be some characters that we can play around with. And I want to think of items that you can see in gaming. I'm thinking like a potion bottle, maybe a star, like a gaming console. Let's try to sketch that out. I'm just going to start by sketching this little potion bottle. Just something very simple like this. Maybe the top here is a little bit thicker, little bit wider. Then we've got something like a cork sitting in it that could work. Well, maybe some liquid coming away from the side here. I want to be able to actually have that potion in there. Some savouching in there, maybe to get a little motion could do something like this. Maybe some bubbles. We wanted to have that character, right? I'm just going to start by drawing in a little cute face. Then we can see if we want to create some other type of interaction. Perhaps once we have the actual characters painted out, we got our first character here. Then now I'm going to try to add the little console. Now I'm thinking that doesn't have to look exactly like an actual console would, but I really like the shape of an Xbox one because it has the look of these like almost like little arms or legs coming out. We got this little shape here that could be a really happy character like this. Then we could even do how you have like the circles for the different buttons. Those could be more like the cheeks, I think that could be really cute. Maybe we're going to move the eyes up a little to create a little bit more of that happy, cute expression. Then maybe we add a little star here just to have a bit more of something that is a little bit different in size, in terms of proportion, just to bring a little bit more of a dynamic impression, maybe some little bursts going on. We could have some things to add in the white space, because whenever we have these empty areas, it can be quite nice to have something to fill that in with. I think this is going to be the basic sketch that we've got to work with. 9. Example - Colours: We got our sketch. I'm going to lower the opacity of this one here, depending on how complex your sketch is. You could definitely do a clean sketch going over and drawing a lot more details. But in this case, we're going to keep it quite simple. I've just lowered the opacity and then I'm just going to add a layer underneath. We're going to look at the color palette. We saw this quite muted color palette. I have this one right here that is going to make up the color palette we're working with. I want the bottle to be quite pale so that the actual liquid inside is going to be quite powerful. But we still want to stick to these mutus colors. I'm going to pick something like this, very light pink color for the brush. We want something that, again, has a lot of texture but still feels like it has a solid fill. I really like the dry ink brush that comes with procrete. But if you wanted more, you can use something like the sticks one, for example. It's got lots of texture, but I'm going to go with the dry brush one. For this, I'm just going to start by making the circle. And to make a perfect circle, If you make roughly a circle, then you let the pen be still on the ipad, it's going to make a circle. And if you hold your finger down, it's going to make a perfect circle. And then you can go in and out to resize it. I think that looks really good. I'm just going to grab my brush here, because what you could do is you could go and pull the color and go right to the middle. And that would do a fill. But as you can see, that gives it a solid fill. I actually want that texture. I'm just going to go in and use the brush to actually fill in this area. Great, I'm going to do the same thing for this bit over here. I want the lines to be straight, so I'm just going to hold it down and put my finger and that will make those lines straight. We don't have to worry so much about this at the top here, because we're going to have this shape on top be layered on top. We don't have to worry so much about this one, We want them on different layers because we want to be able to put shading in between them with a nice clean line. I'm just going to start by finishing this off here. Great. Now we can add a new layer to be able to see what I'm doing. I'm just going to lower the opacity of the layer underneath then we can actually see what it is that we're doing. If you want more of a hand drawn feeling, you can use a bigger brush. If you want it to be a lot more precise, then you could use a much thinner, smaller brush. One of my favorite tricks, if you want to be adding a lot more personality, and you're someone who likes to make things very precise, is to use a brush that's so big that you can't be precise because that tends to create a lot of personality. Great. So I'm just going to bring the opacity back there. I want this cork to be behind, but it can be on the same layer as the back bottle because we don't want them to be actually touching. Because then as we're recoloring in procreate, you can actually pick a color and then you can pull that onto an area, but it has to be separate from other colors. I'm going to use this one here. We're just going to go in and draw the cork here at a little bit of a nice angle. I'm going to put this circle on top so that we can do the shading, just like we were talking about before. It's always nice to keep things on their own layers because that means that we actually have the ability to go in and change clipping masks. We can go and add different effects, add shading, add highlights. Keeping things on their own layer is really good. In procreate, your artboard size is going to dictate how many layers that you have available. When you're creating your artboard. You're actually able to set the size. And then knowing how many layers you're going to be getting, you can adjust that as you're setting it up. We can do the same thing here as we did with the circle before by just holding down, amazing, there we go. I'm just going to bring the opacity back up, that's our bottle. So I'm just going to go and color in this little controller here. Now normally the controller would be white. But we want to think about the contrast between these. I think I want to have quite a bit of color inside of the actual liquid. I'm going to keep the color for the controller still quite bright. I'm going to add a new layer behind here. We're going to grab this lighter beige color. Don't be afraid to go over your illustrations a few times. If you want to create a curve that you feel is not quite looking the way you want, you can always go over it and just keep tweaking it until it feels like a good idea. A lot of times you might have to actually turn your sketch off just so that you can start to actually spot where areas might not be looking the way that you want them to perfect. Now we can start adding the star and the details. Let's bring our sketch back. I'm going to add the star first. It's going to be a nice pop of color. It's always a good idea to make sure that your sketch has everything where you want it to, because especially in a program like procreate, if you start moving things around after you've actually drawn them, they're going to lose a lot of quality. This won't really be an issue if you're working in a program like Adobe Illustrator. Because you're working with vectors. And they can be scaled up and down no problem. But especially in resizing and moving items means that they lose a lot of quality. They'll look pixelated. Just use your sketching stage as a way to actually map everything out. And then your coloring stage can just be really fun and relaxing and you can maybe watch a movie or listen to a podcast or something at the same time. Very nice. And then I'm just going to add these little bursts here, The little star. Now I think I'm going to add this in a darker pink color just to get a little bit of contrast with the actual star itself. Okay, very nice. So now we can go in and add all of the little details. 10. Example - Details and Shading: So I'm gonna start by adding the little cheeks to our little character over here. I probably want a pink that's a little bit darker than the pink that we've got for the bottle, just so that it doesn't blend together too much. I'm just going to go in a little bit closer like that, and then trying to get this at roughly the same height. Okay, Then we can add in our liquid. I'm going to start by this layer on top because that's going to be a little bit of a darker color. And then we can place the other one on top. I'm going to pick a green color just because I want to make sure that we're contrasting it from the bottle itself. Let's try this one. Okay, I think that could work well. It might look a little bit toxic, but it depends on what it's going to be used for. I think for a video game that's totally fine. Great, Then we're going to be adding the other color on top. I'm going to go with eight lighter shade here. There we can go in and shape it a little bit more just to make sure we're tracing the edge of the bottle a little bit more. There we go. Then we have our really cute faces to add, That will be really fun. Let's add in some details. We're going to be adding shading in the second, but I just want to go over and actually look at the details First, I'm going to add these little cute characters faces. We're going to start with the eyes. Sometimes you have to zoom out to see if you feel like the brush stroke is the right width. I'm thinking that maybe it would be cute to have a bit more interaction. Going to see if maybe we can have this character maybe looking at this one a little bit more. That could be really cute. Then we could bring back the cheeks into this as well. So we can have a little bit of a light pink here. See if that looks good. Sometimes visibility is an issue, so you have to think about the color combinations. I'm also going to go in and add these little bubbles rising up here. Okay, perfect. Now we're going to go into shading. I'm going to hide the sketch. And then we're going to go and actually start adding shading where we think that would make sense. I'm going to start with this bottle here because that would be a really obvious one to have a look at. We're going to add a layer above. We're going to set it to multiply. Then I'm going to click and do clipping mask, that way we can choose the same color. Then I'm going to go and use a stipple brush. I use a brush set called Mimi's brushes from a created called Mimi. I'm going to use this one Mimi texture medium. All of these different things that I'm using are linked in the workbook so that you can have a look. Because we've created these on different layers. This is where you're going to see that magic happen. It's really easy to actually create that line there. We can also go in and see if we want this shading to happen somewhere else. Like maybe we want it to be a little bit at the edge of the bottle like that to create a little bit more dimension. Then we can go into other places, like let's say we want to go into the actual controller here. We want to do the same thing, make it a clipping mask, make it a multiply. If you want the shading to be a little bit stronger or a little bit less strong, you could always work with the opacity here. I'm going to do the same thing of grabbing the shading here, color. And I can go in and add that shading in like that, that's giving us a little bit of an effect there. And I'm going to go in here as well to create a little bit more of that effect. Very good. Okay. And then we're going to work on this cork here. I already have a layer there, it's just about choosing the color. I'm going to start by adding the little shading like that. Then we remember we have this at the top here. I'd like to do something like this. Might have to smooth that out a little again. We have to remember which way that the light is going to come. In this case, I've chosen the light to come from the right. That way we're going to have lighter areas here and darker areas on the left hand side. We can do the same thing with the star and put a bit of shading going on. On this side, you can see how much you want. Play around with the intensity here, maybe change the brush thickness a little bit to play around with how sharp you want those lines to be. I like using quite a big thick brush because it gives it a bit of a softer look. Sometimes you have to redo. I think that's the bit that is really important about illustration, that you just have to experiment. I'm actually going to pull down the opacity on this one a little bit so that it's not as strong because I don't think we needed to be. And then we can go into certain areas and make them a little bit stronger. Okay, that looks better then we want this to happen on the liquid as well, because I want it to be a little bit of a contrast there. Let's add a layer above, multiply clipping mask. Grab this color here. Then we can go in and add the little shading here, something like this. I think it just brings so much depth, which is really cute. I think the last thing I'm going to do for this one is I'm going to actually go and add a little highlights. I'm going to go back to my dry brush, but I'm still going to use the multiply and I'm just going to add in these little effects that make it look a little bit more like a cork here like that. Then we're going to go in and add little highlights. I feel like we would have, especially for the bottle, some light hitting the side here. We could make something like that, Maybe a shine. And that's going to make a huge difference. I think we could do the same thing on the star, Something here, that the star would be a little bit shiny, maybe maybe a little bit on this side as well. That just brings so much more dimension to it. I think we could do something similar to adding a detail here. I'm just going to go and grab a color that's very close to the color of this one. Let's have a look. Yeah, that looks good. We might want to add maybe some little eyebrows just to add a little bit more personality to our little character. We could add one of those little buttons over here if that's something that feels right. Okay. I think I'm going to stop there because sometimes you have to just take a step back and not actually. Okay, well, I got one more actually. We're going to add a little bit of a little shine up here as well. Okay, I think that's it. Sometimes you have to step away and just not illustrate anymore. And I think this is the case where this one is actually done as it is. I hope this made it a little bit more concrete to actually see it happen in action. This is a technique that you can use when you're developing your own style, as well as you're creating a moodboard and you're reviewing it. You can start to pick out details that you like about different pictures and illustration examples, and then you can start putting those together into your own unique style. Now it's your turn. Go ahead and create the cooking illustration in all three styles. Don't forget to post either the finished work or let's say the line illustration in the Projects tab. You just go down underneath the video and click on the Projects tab. And there you can post your project. So that we can all learn from each other and get inspired. I'll make sure to post mine as well so you can have a look at how I approached it. 11. Approaching realistic illustrations: Let's create a realistic illustration together. We're going to go through all the different steps together. These steps will also help you, if you're creating any other illustration style, you just have to adapt it to the style that are you using. But the steps will be more or less the same. I have chosen to illustrate a set up with lemons and a nice picture of lemonade. Let's get into that together. First up, we want to break our illustration into basic shapes. For example, I'm drawing a lemon. I can start to add circles for the different parts of the lemon itself, and triangles and rectangles for the leaves. These are all images that I got from a free site called Pexels. We do have the right to use them as you're sketching these shapes use a light color. I like to use red or light blue since it helps make it easier for me to see what we're doing when we move forward and we can sketch on top of it for our more clean sketch. Once we've blocked out all the general elements where we want them, we can add a new layer and lower the opacity of my first sketch just a little bit. If you're an Adobe Illustrator, you can also add a new layer and lock the first sketch. Now I go over my sketch again with a slightly darker color and try to look at the curves and deviations from those basic shapes. Don't be afraid to undo or leave a lot of lines. This is the sketching stage, so nothing needs to be perfect. Once I'd like to look of my sketch, I high the first rough sketch and lower the opacity of my more clean sketch. At this stage, you can choose to either move on to a very clean line sketch. This is something that you might want to do if you're actually keeping the line drawing as an outline, say as we did in one of the other styles. Or you can choose to go straight into color, which is what I'm going to be doing here. Before illustrating, I like to establish the color palette by swatching out where each color should be. This helps me make sure they all work nicely together. And it saves me a ton of time later on. So I can just enjoy the illustration process. I try out different colors on layers underneath my sketch. If you feel unsure, you can even make a few copies and try out ideas on smaller thumbnails. Now we can move on to illustrating using colors. I start by laying out all the solid colors and make sure to place items that would touch on different layers. This way you can recolor them and add shading and texture to them later. Brush I'm using right now is mimicking wet acrylic paint. I like it because it has a more natural texture that gives less of a digital feeling, but it still has really good coverage. Once the base colors are done, I move on to shadows. We want to go back to our references all the time and really try to understand where shadows would naturally fall and how strong they would be. Pick a direction that the light will come from so that all your shadows will fall on the opposite side. To get a good color, I add a layer above, just like we did in the example with the gaming illustration. I set it as a clipping mask and choose multiply. This will pick up the color that's underneath and create a more natural, more realistic impression. To get that really realistic look, we'll need to play around with the opacity to build up our shadows. Most shadows in real life are not super harsh, but rather feather and fade at the edges. I'd like to start by adding a more harsh area first and then lowering my opacity of my brush and blending it in like if you were putting on makeup. If you're in procreate, you can choose to have your eraser be the same brush as you're painting with. That way, you can remove areas where you went too far without ruining the texture. Once we're happy with the shading, we move on to light. Think back to where the light is coming from and look at your reference to understand how the light falls on each object. The same thing here as with the shading. Some lighter areas will be stronger and some will just have a little bit of lights. Keep blending and building up the lights. I set the light layers as a clipping mask as well, but the blend mode is just set to normal. The last step is details. This is where that really hyper realistic look usually comes in. For example, does the lemon have dimples? Do the leaves have veins? Or does the surface have some texture? Maybe play around on a new layer and make sure to take a step back now. And then sometimes we can get very caught up in the illustration and loose perspective. Grab a nice drink, do something else, and then come back to it. I hope these tips made realistic illustrations feel a little bit less difficult to approach. And that you feel empowered to give them a try yourself if it's not something you normally do. These tips, like I mentioned, they can be used for any illustration style, blocking out the shapes that we, that we did, thinking about lighting and shading. These are universal principles for illustration that you can incorporate into any of your work. 12. Brand Guide - Explaining your Style: If you are the one developing a brand style, being able to explain the style in a brand guide can be really valuable to a client. We want anyone who is looking at that brand guide to understand why you made certain choices and what they need to consider when they're replicating the style. I like to include more than one example if you have it just so that they can see how the illustration style is used in different applications, like for social media posts or for their website, or on a T shirt, for example. Here's an example of what it could look like in a brand guide. This is an illustration I created for our creative community. The things that I want to point out is the use of color and how to combine them and how I want someone to feel once the illustration is done. In our case, I tie the mood back to the company goals. The illustration style should feel modern, creative, and a little bit whimsical. I also want the colors to be used in different proportions, for there to be one main focal point, usually a person. I have also showed some examples of the illustration on how it can be used day to day. Exactly what you choose to add depends on the project and the brand and how they actually will use their illustrations in real life. 13. Wrap up: Being a flexible illustrator is a really valuable skill. It doesn't mean you can't have your own unique style, but it just means you can take on lots of different fun types of projects and develop your skills depending on the needs of the client. I'm here to answer all your different questions. We have a discussion tab underneath and the project tab, so you can ask questions, you can post your own projects and support each other. I'm going to post my own approach to the cooking illustrations as well, just so that you can use it as a point of reference or inspiration. If you like, just let me know if you have any questions at all. If you want more illustration inspiration and tips, you can go and check out my Youtube channel as well. Thank you so much for taking this class. Good luck with all your projects and see you soon.