Transcripts
1. Welcome to class!: Hello everyone and welcome back to another classroom with me Christina [inaudible]. I'm an illustrator and surface pattern designer from Mariefred, Sweden. I've been working with illustration full time since 2010. So it's been nearly a decade. A couple of years ago, I was gifted the iPad Pro. Since then I have been just so impressed by how it has revolutionized my work and my workflow, productivity, all that stuff. I can't see myself going back to traditional media. In this class I want to be sharing with you all my best tips for improving your workflow so that you can have a productive, creative days as well like me, and I will also be sharing four of my workflows. I will quickly be going over my workflow for planning, digital planning, searching for inspiration, planning, collection, all that stuff. Then we'll dive deep into three of my main ways of working using the same sketch so we can see how the same image looks slightly different in three different kinds of styles or workflows, as we can see. I hope throughout the class that you'll get tons of tips and tricks to help you with your workflow and that you'll be inspired by how I work. Let's get into the class.
2. Supplies & the Class Project: For this class, because it is all about the iPad, you will need an iPad to work on and the Apple Pencil stylus or another stylus if you have that. I have the 12.9 inch iPad Pro and then the apps that I will be using in this class are GoodNotes, which is a paid app, as well as Adobe Sketch, and then I will also be using Procreate, which is also a paid app, and then I will be using Adobe Draw. I will also be finishing on my desktop actually in Adobe Illustrator. Both Adobe sketch and Adobe Draw are free programs so those are great ways to have somewhere to start. Those are the only supplies that you'll be needing because everything's going to be digital here. Then for your class project, I invite you to test one of the workflows that I will be going over in the next coming classes and you can choose to just do one, but I think it would be most beneficial if you did test out maybe two or all three, so that you can get new ideas for new ways of working and bringing some new things into your own workflow that could be beneficial to you to increase productivity or to experiment or just that you're inspired by or you came up with the idea during the class. Simple as that, I think it's best if you use the same sketch so that you can see the same look throughout the different workflows or different processes, but we'll get into that later. That's all you need to know about having what you need for the class and the class project.
3. My Transition to Digital & Best Tips & Tricks: Before we begin, I thought it could be fun to share my transition, we could say to digital from traditional media, because before, I would create all of my illustrations on paper. I would sketch with pencil and then I would draw with ink, and then I would erase the pencil sketches, then I would scan into the computer in Photoshop, and then I would delete all the mistakes that I made, or the peak protector, and all that stuff. Then, I would either finish the illustrations in Photoshop that way with digital color or at bring it into Illustrator and convert it with image trace to vector. There are many tasks that would be eliminated when I moved to digital, which I love because I don't have very much time. I have two little kids and very, very short work day. I don't have time to erase tons of staff, and then bringing it into the scanner and then have technical difficulties and then have to erase again in the computer and all that jazz. So I really, really love that the whole process is on the iPad now. That my pencil sketches on its own layer, I don't have to erase that. That's awesome. That I can mess up with my ink pen, and I can immediately erase, and I can test things out. There's three things that the iPad Pro has helped me with, as I like to say, revolutionized my design life. It's a huge statement and over dramatic, but it's true at the same time. It has increased my productivity because like I said, I'm skipping a tons of steps. I'm not scanning anymore, I'm not getting rid of paper texture or mistakes in the computer. While I'm working, I can erase and do over, I can swipe and take away a layer and redo colors really easily. It's very intuitive when you're working in programs like Procreate, and I love that. That's really good. The iPad Pro has also made me way more organized, because I have everything in one place. I have all of my digital planning now on my iPad in good notes. Then, I have my digital sketches of all my collections with all my ideas, and then I can move on to making the sketches with them right side-by-side, and I will be showing you that later. Then, I can make the final artwork from that pencil sketches to the digital color, and that is all here in one place. I love that too. Then, the third thing that it has revolutionized my design life, is that it has actually inspired me to experiment. Because programs like Procreate, they are so intuitive and I would say pretty impressive of how they looks in matches traditional media without me having to go to the art supply store and give them all my savings because I want to test out different pens and paints, and colored pencils and all that stuff. I can test out all those kind of things on the iPad, and there's so many native brushes to procreate that are beautiful. Then you can take classes, or still share to learn how to make your own brushes or you can purchase brushes, or there's even many people who give away free brushes, have received lots of them from different newsletters and stuff like that, so I loved that. It has helped me to maybe step out of my comfort zone that I was doing the same sort of illustrations for the past decade, so now I'm starting to test new textures and looks and my style is starting to evolve a little bit, and I bring it into the future, which feels so good. I don't want to be bored with what I'm creating. I think artists, yeah, they maybe need to find their style, but you always constantly need to be evolving and changing so that you don't get bored with your own work. If you like keeping up with what's going on in the art and design industry. Those are what the iPad or digital working has helped me with. To stem off that, my best tips to improving your workflow, working digitally with the iPad Pro, are to have everything in one place. If you are doing audio note taking all your sketches on the iPad, you always know where they are instead of every time you go to work you have to find your sketchbook, which sketchbook had those specific sketches, of those specific ideas. If you have everything in one place, then of course you will save time and energy looking for that. Also, of course, I'm in love with the whole skipping traditional media but I'm understanding that some people of course love that still. If you really enjoy it, I don't anymore really, but if you do, should continue to do that. If you do enjoy working digitally, I welcome you to try to do the entire process on the iPad or the entire process digitally, just to save time and be productive with your time. My third tip, is to use the function of splits clean on the iPad. I loved that. In good notes, when I'm writing my notes for all of my different things, I can have another screen open such as maybe my Dropbox that I can look at my files or I can bring files into or little stickers that I created into my digital planner, so I can do that. Or when I am sketching out ideas, I can have Pinterest open on half the screen so they can be scrolling through my points that I've saved, the color palettes or anything like that when I'm sketching and coming up with color palettes that have that all right there. That switching between different screens, or looking at different places, it just helps you focus on what you're working on, because everything is in one place, and you can easily swipe with four fingers between your different applications to get your notes and then go back to sketches. I really enjoy this process, if we don't get, we can't tell. Those are my three tips for also having a productive work flow.
4. Digital Planning Workflow: Okay, first step, my digital planning workflow. I just wanted to quickly go over how I plan using the iPad Pro, that process, just so you get an idea. I might not go in super in-depth because I would really like to do a digital planning class in the future. I'm thinking at the beginning of the new year, which would be a perfect time, of course. I use Goodnotes, and that's a paid app. It's not very expensive, and it is great so far that I've used it for a while. We can go in there and I can show you how I had things set up. I have different notebooks where I have all my different ideas and things that I work from, and then I would start building a simple planner for the month, for the week, et cetera. I could show you that quickly. Here is October where I've got going on, where I'm planning and stuff like that, and then I have just a simple this week checklist that I work from that I know my top priorities, my scheduled plans, just something that I need to do like setup film desk area, and filming day is today, marketing plan, et cetera. That's just my simple to-do list. I don't want to have too much to plan. I don't want to have too much of my to-do list because it becomes overwhelming and crazy. Then once I have the first outline of my plans and stuff like that, I have notebooks where I can dive deep into my ideas and I develop my ideas, such as Skillshare, I have for my different courses. Here is for this class about improving your workflow, so I have created a little template, where I then pasted or that I brought into Goodnotes. I can show you quickly how I do that by doing a split screen. The best way is I like to have Dropbox open, so open that. Then I go back into Goodnotes, and then you lift up. I had Dropbox there, so I didn't actually have to open it, but anyways. Then you pull the app until it you will get a little box and you can decide which side you'd like to put it on. I'll put it on the right side here, and then it just pops in there, which is very handy, and then you can slide it to make it 50-50 or whatever. Then from there I have created a planning folder and then I have created small little digital stickers, and templates and stuff that I can then pull in, such as I've created a little blue postit note. I can put it in like that and then it pops up there. Well, that's just a very quick tutorial about stuff like that, but in the future class I will of course go into depth. Anyways, that's one way of using the split-screen feature. Here i have like the main brainstorm up of my class. We can say how the main to-do's and stuff, and then I go into notes and I wrote out my best tips for improving workflow, and then I created my resources page here. Then I even wrote out my class outlines so then I would have something to work with when I'm creating my classes. That's simply how I plan this content, and then I also of course have my collections and stuff. So far I don't have a notebook in Goodnotes for those collections, I might in the future, but right now I've been using Adobe Sketch because I like having things slightly separate, instead of in Procreate having tons a sketches all over the place. Here I have everything, all my collections, sketch ideas in one place. For the most part, right now I'm working with an agent so I create collections that she then distributes, and I'm not actually supposed to show them, but these are just some rough sketches. I think it should be okay. I'll go into this folder of all the ideas that I've already created for her, for myself, we can say, I don't know. In my inspiration class, I have this entire process shown step-by-step, so you can check that video out if you'd like to see a more in-depth version of this, because I won't be going over this for a second time. But I can quickly go over that. Here is where I mapped out all the colors, and then the ideas for my first images, I usually do seven to begin with, and then it usually becomes maybe I go down to six only, or I bump it up to 10, who knows. I pick up background colors and I just sketch the whole thing so I have an idea of what I'm going for. Then once I have this, then I can use this to start working off of. Again, I can bring in Pinterest while I am creating my collections in split screen here, so that I can work side by side like that. Let me show you how you do that. Again, you have Pinterest here, and I just pull it in and maybe have it on that side this time. Then I can find images to work from and search for things at the same time as I'm doing my sketches. To get rid of your, you pull down, and then you swipe it to the side, and then it goes away. You can bring it back again if you swipe it to the left again. That's just a quick run over that. I can show you a few more collection ideas that I have done. Here's a baby collection. It's hard to see, very light, but I was very happy with how this one turned out. It's just nice to have all of these things together. Also, when creating a collection, it's to see them all on one page, the whole thing, so that you see that it's all working together, the colors, the styles, because sometimes I start doing two different styles in a collection, and I need to step back and maybe turn it into two collections if it's going in that direction. This is a great way to get a look of what your collection is looking like if you work in collections. It's also if you have several ideas for the same idea, it would be great way to compare them so that you can see the differences and see which one pops out for you the most. So yeah, that's how I use my iPad for digital planning. It's simple as that. Also with the iPad screen, with four fingers you can swipe to the side to go to the different apps that you have open. I have Pinterest open, and then I have my planning in Goodnotes that I can easily just swipe between if I wanted to remember what I had to do this week and then go back and sketch, or if I had a notebook of all my ideas and if I had written down something. That's a great way that I increase productivity and work effectively. That's my first workflow. It wasn't really a complete workflow, but I think you get the idea. Let's dive deeper into the fun part and start getting illustrating.
5. Procreate Workflow: Okay. On to the fun part. We're going to start illustrating and I'm going to be showing my first workflow, which may be as my favorite workflow and that is in Procreate. That's where I work for the most part right now. I create all of my illustrations for Instagram, through the majority of my clients and now I've also been doing most of my surface pattern design work in Procreate as well because I personally have noticed that clients have been liking the hand-drawn look and they're not enjoying my vector work as much. So that's why I've made that jump. Instead, they'll still enjoy and love working vectors. That's why I'll be showing other workflows that I do as well but this is my favorite. To save time, I have created a sketch already that I'll be working with for this workflow and then the coming two workflows and then we could open up here and I have it in my Instagram folder in Procreate, that you might recognize some of the images if you follow me there. So here it is I thought it'll be fun to do a flat layer. It's something that I enjoy doing. It's kind of signature thing, I guess, that I do and I thought it'd be fun way to show the different items. Anyhow, I'll just start getting started in Procreate and with Instagram, I have a set palette that I use for a while previously I was using a palette maybe for a year and now I've recently changed it to this warm guy here and I've been enjoying doing that. It has opened up my eyes because it's a little bit different from what I usually do, but anyhow. So let's just get into it. I think this one's going to have a white background. Just be easy and simple. So my first step is that I always Create a new layer. That is the one part that I met, I messed that up all the time. So dumb and [inaudible] these together all my sketch layers. Okay. New layer and then my favorite ink brush is the dry ink and then I like to choose a black that's not very very black. It's more of a charcoal grade and then I will start ticket drawing. I usually do this part if I have decided, especially if it's for Instagram or something that's just for me and my own use. I will draw everything on the lines on one layer instead of keeping things separate that can be moved easily. I would say that maybe for client work, but since it's just for me, I can draw it all in one piece and save time and energy. That's another way I save time and be productive. I'm just going to start going. Okay. My first initial ink outline final pulse duration is complete now I Add in the colors, which is really fun. That's the fun part. I make sure to create a layer underneath that inclines and then I use usually the shale brush because I really like how that looks and I fill in all the items with my colors. I'd usually start off with just blocking in all the colors that I'd like to have. Yeah, sometimes I have layers with the same color on the same layer or just keep all the different. It depends on how many items they have, how many layers. I don't like having a million layers, anyhow. So let's start blocking in all the items and then I work from the item, obviously that's at the bottom and work my way up with the layer so that they lay on top of each other and one thing that I had been experimenting with my work is trying to work slightly loose, stereotype my lines not as crisp to have the color go outside the lines a little bit, just so that it is a little bit more life looks a little bit more artistic and I'm starting to really loving how that's looking. Now that they created the color of the shoes blue, I kind of feel like the coral's popping a little bit too much and I would like the dress maybe to be a little bit more subdued and the kind of the coral in the accessories. Because I did them on different layers, it's very easy to change. I like the best valid choice alpha lock and then choose another color. Let's try this and then you just click the layer again as a fill layer to pit brown. We do the whole dress pink because it's how I'd like. Okay. Now for the even more fun part which is adding texture and this is what I usually do. To do that, I usually put clipping masks on top of my different layers that I want to add temperature. So maybe the dress should have some texture on it. So I add a new layer and then press clipping mask, so everything will be clipped onto it and then I can draw all over the place only and it's going to end up on those pieces of their dress, which is very handy. I have created my own textures and have received free texture brushes. I'm not sure which is which, but I have a couple here that I'd like to use. One color random crumbles is one of my favorite. Can see what that looks like. Just to give a little texture and sometimes that's not what I'm going for. Let's try something else and maybe they could have tone one replica. That looks nice, and I can maybe Add that same to the other one as well, then they're clipping less, so they kind of meshes together. That looks cool. The shoes are so small that I don't think that we need to Add so much texture there, but if I were to make them look kind of swayed. I have a brush there I like to use. I like to use flakes and it makes it just gets a slight texture, then you can do a couple colors to give dimension, maybe later and what's great about having it on different layers of course is that you can turn them off to see what the difference was like, and then I think the last item that I want to add texture to is the bag and another clipping mask and I'd pick a color, like this orangey would be cool. Maybe this one we look over the crumbles. Yeah. That looks cool and then maybe I'll do on the handles as well. So, yeah. That's the final illustration complete, and I hope you enjoyed the process of watching me create in Procreate and maybe you learned something new or found it interesting, at least to see how I create. So let's move on to some other of my workflows.
6. Procreate & Adobe Draw Workflow: Now, let's move on to my second workflow, and this is like a mash-up between my raster workflow and my vector workflow. This is when I want my end result to be vector, but I want to give it a hand-drawn feel. I will use the same ink lines that I created in the first illustration. I don't need to redraw those again, there would be no point in doing that. I'm just going to save that as an image. Got rid of the background as well so it's going to be just the lines. Save it as a ping just to my device. Now going to open up Adobe Draw. I opened up here a square image. Since my image is square for Instagram, we're going to add an image layer from my iPad. Here it is. My first first one, the second one I mean. Done. There we go. Now I have my image like this, and now I can do pretty much the same thing as I did in my other one except for this is more vectors can be more crisp. The idea with this is that later I'm going to bring this layer into Illustrator and I'm going to image trace it so that it becomes vector and matches the whole style. But when I'm coloring these, I like to try to be a little bit looser so that the color goes outside the lines. I think that gives it a nice hand-drawn feel, stuff like that. I'll show you what's going on here. Also, I need to bring in my color palette and see. I'll save this one also to use as a little reference since I want it to match so that we get an idea. I'll bring that in here as well. That one just can be a little small in the corners so you can just use as a reference later. To start of we will do the pink dress. To make this process go a little bit quicker I just roughly outlined the area, and then I can place the pencil in the area and it fills. That makes the process go quicker so you learn to paint in every single area. Because of the way that vector images are built up, you don't have to worry about making sure that all colors are on different layers. You could essentially create all of the illustration on one layer if you wanted to. I think I will put the different items on different layers just for organization purposes, but we don't really have to which is neat. That's also a time saver. That's the main illustration of all the colors laid in, and to add texture I would either have to do that in Illustrator later for when I clip in some textures that I have, or I can draw little details on top of these items. I think maybe I'll try that for this one just for fun. On top of the scarf, I will try recreating what I did on the other one. Draw lines and shapes. There we go, and then also maybe some texture on the dresses. Well, I don't know if I can try a little polka dot, maybe. That mimics what I was going for in the other illustration that I had going. Then the only last thing I think would be to add a little texture to the bag. I'm going to lift that orangey color that I had. That makes it quite simple look, and I like how crisp and clean these illustrations are. The more black lines that you create, that also adds to the how it makes it look a little bit more hand-drawn. You'll see later when I bring it into Illustrator the final look when the lines become image traced. It also warps a little bit so that more of the color shows and the background doesn't match up perfectly. I really liked that look. This is another one of my favorite looks in my workflows. Also, I created this. I think it's more intuitive and easier to create color on the iPad rather than coloring in Illustrator. This is a way for me to have a hands-drawn look, but also saved me time because I am working intuitively and quickly and then have the lines. Also, one thing that I really like is that I have my inclines on a layer here. Because this is an Adobe app I can then send this message to Illustrator directly and it will have the outline illustration is already in the file, so when I bring it into Illustrator it's there as separate layers. I can image trace it immediately and it becomes a final illustration. That's really quick too, so I don't have to separately bring in my outline illustration. It's already here magically sent to Illustrator so I really love that tip as well. I'll finish this in Illustrator and show you the final look.
7. Adobe Draw Workflow: Now it's time for my third and final workflow, which is completely vector, and I like to use Adobe Draw for this because it's a really fun way to draw, and I love that it's vector, but it's like painting. It's simple and easy, and also I like the effect that it creates and it's a little bit more poppy and fun. This is my workflow for that. Again, I will close, this one open up another square document, and then I will bring in. Instead of my schedule, I think I will work from my final ink drawing that I did before so it's easier to see for you guys. I've created our layer on top, and now I'm going to redraw the outlines. I will make the sketch later, so it's like light gray, and then I will draw on it with black lines. There we go. Usually I sketch it in color just so that I can see them better. To good size, and then again, I am going to draw everything in one piece, all the outlines because I can, because this is just for my own personal work for Instagram. Here we go. That's it, I have my new vector ink lines all drawn in and I have hidden my sketch. Now I can get into the coloring part, and for the coloring, I can do the exact same thing as I did in my other one by coloring slightly outside of the lines behind an illustration, or sometimes they even enjoy just like straight up filling in the areas. Depends on the look that I'm wanting to go for. If I wanted to be really crisp and just clean, I will fill in. But I think for this illustration, I think I will do like I did in my previous one. I'm just going to be filling in behind like I did in the last illustration, making sure to go color outside the lines just to make a little bit more stylized and interesting, and I will show you the end result when that's done. That's the final illustration complete, completely vectored in Adobe Draw, I like this technique, because what you see is what you get and the final result is really easy to edit later in Adobe Illustrator if I need to change colors for resides ever or tweak anything like that. Let's jump into the computer quickly and we can compare how they all look and go through what we just did.
8. Compare & Contrast: Here we are in Illustrator. I brought in all three of the illustrations that I created. I have my first one which I created in Procreate, and then I have my second one, where I have the lines that we're drawing in Procreate, but I have the vector color, and then I have my folly vector illustration completely done in Adobe Draw. So I thought to show you the finished look of the second one because we haven't finished that one yet. We could of course keep it like this if we wanted that look but I would like to correct it. So it's completely vector, which would be smart. Let's zoom in a little bit on that one. So you can see a little bit better. I'm going to select the layer with the lines, and then I'm going to go to image trace. I have the dialogue box right here. What am I doing? Anyhow. It is selected. I'm not sure if there's any white, but anyways, we will ignore white and we'll press preview and see what happens. As you can see, it didn't really get the small lines, so I'm going to up the threshold a little bit. I think that looks a little bit better. But you can see that the lines become a little bit more wonky. There's a lot of breaks. It looks a little bit less clean than the one that I've made completely with vector lines. They're very similar in look, but it's a slight difference that you might like or not like that. Sometimes the computer makes decisions for you. Sometimes little pieces are dropped, like over here. So that makes it look a little bit more artistic. Then like over here as well there's little pieces that aren't really missing, that's not something maybe that you would have drawn in. That's the reason why I like this technique. So let's just do a close-up of all of them. So again, here is my procreate one with the scratchy ink lines, a little bit more texture and a little bit more hand-drawn look, but it isn't hand-drawn, it's just digital. I added a little bit more extra texture to this one. Then we moved on to my hybrid here. So it has a slightly more hand-drawn look to the lines, but it has vector color and it became completely vector when we converted it now. Then we have my fully vector that's super easy to change the colors and all that stuff. That's it. This is my three workflows for the three techniques that they usually use when creating artwork. Again, I hope that you found something interesting here for you on my workflows or how I do things and at least that it was interesting to see how I usually work. It was really fun to share with you, and I hope that you will test some of these techniques or workflows out for yourself, and I can't wait to see what you will be showing in your projects.
9. Thanks for Watching!: That's it. I hope that you found this class inspiring and interesting and that you got a nice glimpse into how I work and how my brain works in my different ways of working. I hope also that maybe you could bring one of my little tips or how I work to your workflow, and maybe it will help you to stay productive, or motivated, or inspired, or save your time, who knows? Anything like that. Or if you just like the look of how I do things, but I usually say in my other classes, I also welcome you to make it your own. Take little pieces of how I work, and then look at another artist and how they work. Also, test out things yourself, and figure out what works for you so that you have a workflow and a style and all that stuff that fits exactly you that you feel 100 percent comfortable with and you enjoy creating, because that's the whole point. Otherwise, there would be no fun. Why would we bother? To help you out, I have created a PDF that you can find in the projects and resources section, where I have listed all of the digital resources and apps and where you can get free brushes and a ton of sculpture classes, where you can also get more information about using programs like Procreate or maybe only Procreate I put in there. Anyhow, I hope that you'll check that out and find that helpful, especially the part about free brushes, that always describe. Then I can't wait to see what you come up with in your class projects, so make sure that you test out some of my workflows or my techniques and create at least one, but I would welcome you to try two or three just so that you can test out new things and get new ideas and post those in the project galleries so you can all see. It's fun. I don't know. I'll make sure to post mine as well so you can check them out too. Yeah, thanks again so much for taking this class. I have plenty of other creative classes and a couple of creative business classes I would love for you to check out. Another great place to find me on Instagram. Get to know me and my work a little bit better. I'd love to have you there @emmakisstina. Thanks for watching. Bye
Kristina Hultkrantz, Illustrator & Surface Pattern Designer
