Transcripts
1. Class Intro Trailer: Hello!: Hi guys, I'm so excited to share my digital painting workflow with you, and I got so many digital painting process classes out there, but I've always found it helpful to see other peoples workflows as they're all different, and I always pick up a great tip. In this class, I'll be sharing my perspective on what makes digital painting so great, and show you my full setup process and a beginner friendly version of my workflow using both procreate and photoshop. In case its your first-time taking a class with me, my name is Mimi, and I'm an Illustrator and Creative Director for my studio Mimochai. We love helping clients with a variety of story-driven branding, and illustration work and also produce our own personal projects such as animations, picture books, I started learning how to paint digitally in 2015, and without exaggeration, it changed my life. I benefited a lot from seeing how others work, and was always grateful that they would share not just their finished drawings, but how they made it happen. I knew I would one day want to share my process and tips to. Of course, isolating and evolving my own process right now but I thought it was a great time to check in and sharing my process, because I still remember all the questions I had as a beginner. Things like whether is worth the jump from traditional to digital painting to what tools I should get with my limited budget? Finally, what workflow is best given all the options out there? To be honest, there's no one right answer for everyone, but I'll share my perspective on those initial questions going over my experience starting with Adobe Photoshop, why i picked up procreate? The pros, and cons I see between the two, and how both still play an important role in my creation process, which continues to evolve as tools, and options keep improving. I hope to introduce both programs just enough so that you can see how it might fit into a workflow in which one might be best for you. To provide a solid beginner friendly example to work from, I'll guide you through my typical painting process using an illustration I created and my accompanies skill share class, design your own Illustrated map. Having a fine, and easy project to start with will make this learning experience way more enjoyable, and you're of course, welcome to join in with any sketch of your own. Together will make a digital painting and develop a workflow that you can integrate into your own. You can also totally fall along with class without any tools first, to see what makes sense for you before committing. Let's get started. I'll see you in class.
2. What We’re Doing in Class: What exactly are we going to be making? We'll be taking an existing sketch design, and coloring it digitally using Procreate and finishing it up and exploiting it in Photoshop. I'm going to use just a portion of this drawing as an example, so it's digestible and easy to follow along. But I'm using the same technique to flesh it out. I'll also choose some of my other illustrations, and talk about some more complicated illustration processes. For those of you who are looking to take their digital painting to the next level. Will go over some common initial questions, then jumping into my setup examples and walk through the full process from inputting your sketch, to lining and coloring to adjustments and final exports. You can come up with a sketch or take my class to come up with a design to work off of. I'm also going to supply a sketch outline you can use to follow along if you just want to focus on learning how to digitally paint. Please keep in mind that there are many ways to arrive at the same final product. Each digital items has their own workflow and system. I'm here to share my personal tips and preferences in hopes that it will be helpful to you. While most classes would jump into the technical aspects at this point. I actually want to address some of the common questions and concerns that beginners typically have at this point, because I definitely remember having them myself. If you just want to see my Procreate and Photoshop process, please jump straight to the example section. The next few videos are all about what I've learned and tips I have, since starting to learn how to digitally paint as a beginner. Let's get into it. I'll see you in the next class.
3. Common Beginner Questions!: Let's clarify the foundational motivation of why we're laying digital painting and address some of the common questions or concerns that beginners typically have. I assume you're taking this class because you're already want to learn how to digitally paint. But it's still helpful to clarify our why. First, how hard is it? Is learning how to digitally paint worth the effort? I'm going to be honest here, depending on your drawing level and comfort with digital tools, digital painting can have a steep initial learning curve. However, I believe if you start with a simple drawing that you're really excited about, the learning curve is fun and you'll surprise yourself with how quickly you get the hang of it. Having realistic expectations is important too. So often classes are taught by amazing artists and illustrators and make it look so easy, but when you try to do it, it looks bad. That's because they spent hundreds and thousands of hours training. So now they can make something a lot quicker than a beginner. A lot of the things you'll need to think about and figure as someone who's just starting out. They've already solved long ago and therefore it doesn't show in their tutorial examples. They already understand lighting and shading and where those colors should go. They understand basic anatomy and have since stylized it for themselves so they don't need to redraw that leg over and over again. But I promise it's not magic, it's skill and practice. Please don't feel bad if you find it challenging at first, it's totally normal. That's also what will make it feel great once you see how far you've come. You'll get the hang of it with practice and I think it's totally worth the benefits. What are the benefits? One way I can really sum it up, flexibility. The power of undue painting and digital layers and all those things allows a lot of freedom and forgiveness that you don't get with traditional drawing and painting. There are also many digital adjustments such as resizing or cropping you can do that would be way more difficult to recreate, or at least quickly recreate on paper. Not to mention way more wasteful because you'd go through so much more materials. I found being able to experiment with non-destructive adjustments, which I'll get into more detail later. Also so clutch and important to my growth and creative exercise. In addition, as someone who illustrates for work, one of the main benefits to me is efficiency. I love traditional drawing two, and nothing can replace the feeling of a pencil on real paper. However, when it comes to client where if it has timing and flexibility demands, it's a no-brainer. There's a scene in the 2017 best picture Oscar winner, The Shape of Water, where this poor illustrator character has to redo his entire meticulously hand painted artwork because a client wanted red jello instead of green jello. That would be much simpler edit if it was a digital file. These days, clients are expecting that efficient flexibility since other digital illustrators and artists can offer it. It's also way better for archiving and organization. Physical copies can get damaged and also creates a storage headache, especially if you work large. I personally love having all my client and personal work neatly organized and archived digitally, knowing I can always pull it back up if needed. For those of you who do already know how to draw traditionally, you might be wondering how directly well your traditional art skills transfer to your digital art skills. I think it'll transfer a lot. Having a traditional knowledge is so key in being able to grow as a digital painter. Things like color theory, shape, language, and line weights are all still equally relevant and important when it comes to digital work. The main thing to me is learning how to think about painting and solving problems a little bit differently when you're working or transitioning to digital. For example, beautiful organic textures can sometimes come easier with analog tools compared to having to recreate them digitally. Layering a digital drawing can be really different from a traditional approach and how all your materials interact with each other. Now that you're convinced that digital painting is amazing and great, you might be wondering what kind of tools you should get. I think a common question or concern that people have is whether expensive tools will make you a better artist. I want to say yes and no. No because the thing is, you still need to learn your art fundamentals. Digital tools simply help make things quicker and more efficient. So a $2,000 antique won't help you create these amazing portraits if you don't have a basic understanding of anatomy. It won't help you develop an amazing unique style if you haven't gone through the effort of study and practice in the illustration. What expensive tools do is help make a process easier or more pleasant. I started with a $60 basic tablet and an existing computer at the time. I think I thought that was a splurge and Photoshop costed $10 per month, but looking back on it, it was well worth the investment. It also shows that you don't need to get started with something super expensive or feel that you need to invest thousands of $ just to learn how to digitally paint. If budget is a concern, but you also want to start with professional tools, consider a secondhand option from Amazon new sellers or somebody similar. I would just recommend getting something you can return or at least test before you commit to buying. I hope that puts any concerns you might have had at ease. If there are any questions you have, but I didn't get to, please feel free to ask them in the class discussion board, and I'd be happy to share my perspective on them. For now let's move on to my tool recommendations. I'll see in the next class.
4. Recommendations: Hardware Tools: Now let's get into what hardware I recommend for beginners. It is part of one of the main concerns you have when starting out as you want to get the best value for your investment. There's a ton of options on the market right now and my personal buying style is to get the highest quality possible given my budget. I look for the best brands and then try to figure out what is most important to me because there's always different price points between either the storage capacities are, or whether there's Wi-Fi and things like that. In this market, I would say for tablets for your desktop PC, Wacom is still the leader. For me when it comes to tablets, I really think the iPad Pro the best. The difference between the two, I'm sure you've already thought about for yourself is, do you want to be more mobile, are you looking for a desktop solution for an existing computer. Obviously, if you already have a laptop that can be powerful enough to run Photoshop, then it's easier and cheaper to just get a Tablet to get familiar with digital painting. On the other hand, if you're starting from scratch and you want something that suits all of your needs, an iPad might be appropriate if you don't do that much computing work, and you actually just want a digital painting tool. I'm going to talk a little bit about the hardware that I use. Of course you should do your own research, but this is just after a lot of research on my part where I ended up with. For the desktop, I use a MacBook Pro, but since Photoshop runs on either PC or Mac, you can use either one and I'm not going to get into whether Macs are better than PCs. But I will say that I use an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro. As much as they want to get out of the apple dominant system, I will say the AirDrop capabilities between the three really do help a lot in streamlining my workflow and being able to transfer files back and forth in a really quick way. But when I started out, I was using the intro level Bamboo Tablet, which has been replaced by their Wacom Intuos art. It was totally fine as a beginner and I think it was actually nice to work off of something simpler, and something I didn't feel like I invested a ton of money and so the pressure was a little bit less there. It's also super light, which is great for transportation. However I will say that when I use it now, I can definitely see the difference between the pressure sensitivity until, and the difference it makes in the detail of my work. If you use vectors and illustrate in Illustrator, and I really don't think it matters. Although the stylus' physical weight does make a surprising difference when using it in terms of comfort and hand fatigue. However, I do think that given all the positive reviews on this starter tablet, it's not a bad choice for beginner, and you shouldn't feel that you can't do any of the things I'll show you in this class because you got the starter version. For those of you who are looking for a slightly better option, I currently use the Wacom intuos Pro and both the small and medium size. I keep one at my house and the other one at my office. Functionally, they are totally the same in my experience. So if you want to save a $100, you can totally do the same things on the smaller size, plus the small and is a lot more transportable and takes up less space on your desk so that can be a pro depending on your situation. That said if I had to just pick one, I would still go for the medium size because I find that the larger space just helps me have a freer workflow. Sometimes on the small one I will find that after like move my hand and start all over in the positioning and it does break up my stream. Now let's move on to the iPad Pro and the Apple pencil. The iPad Pro really is amazing for digital drawing and painting, especially for those of you who are just starting out because it's so intuitive. I've tried Microsoft Surface Pro and the pen pressure sensitivity until are just not as good for digital painting purposes right now, at least in my opinion. I do think, and when it comes to size the on the iPad Pro, that bigger is better, especially if you're likely to do more complicated digital paintings and not just, for example, lettering. But of course, work with your budget. I basically have the largest iPad Pro size available, but then the cheapest version of that. So it's Wi-Fi only and the smallest storage capacity because when I was choosing, I felt that it was the most important in terms of weighing my budget options of having a larger size but I actually don't really need that much storage space because I tend to just move the files onto my computer, store it on the Cloud and then I can take it off my iPad. I also don't do that many other things on my iPad, so I don't have a ton of other apps or take, a lot of photos or videos. The storage is really all basically digital paintings. That said, if you needed to use this as your primary computer and you are storing a lot of photos and a lot of other apps on here, I would definitely recommend getting the largest sized in terms of storage that you can, because it really is frustrating to feel like you need to delete things that you would rather not. Finally, in terms of Wi-Fi connection, I personally have never needed anything more than the Wi-Fi connection. In a pinch, I can always connect it to a hotspot or I tend to be working on an either at home or in a coffee shop that has Wi-Fi. Unless you really need it for whatever reason, I recommend just saving the money and using it either on getting a bigger size or more storage space. Now let's talk a little bit about the stylus. I know it seems like a lot of money to pay a $100 for this thin little thing but I personally find the Apple pencil to be really worth it. I definitely had that hesitation to spend that much on a stylus because there's so many other options out there and you think, maybe one of these will work just as well. But of course, Apple has optimized its iPad Pro to work really well with the pencil. I had tried other brands such as a Adonit Jot Pro, the Wacom stylus, the Paper by FiftyThree, put out a pencil that was really attractive, but actually wasn't that useful when I actually came to more detailed digital painting, and just generic ones off of Amazon. Finally, when I got the iPad Pro and used it for a little bit, investing in this really turned out to be worthwhile. You'll find when using it with the iPad Pro, especially with Procreate, is just very intuitive if feels really natural, like drawing in real life. The pressure sensitivity and it is really fine tuned and dialed in. One other thing that you might want to consider is that some people, especially when transitioning from traditional drawing to digital painting, find the feeling of drawing on glass to be unnatural and that's something that's off putting to them. I did find that might be more of a mental adjustment because now I don't actually use a screen protector, and I just draw on the glass and I find it to feel very natural to me. But I remember feeling that way or thinking that before. One thing we could potentially look into is there are these paper feel screen protectors that you can buy, that gives a little bit of truth to the experience and makes you feel more like you're drawing on actual real paper. I'll include a link to that just to give you an example but also know that I don't use any screen protector and I think it's totally fine. In case you're curious about how to protect your iPad, here is what I use. This is something actually got fairly recently. It's little folio that has a flip top and then you can put the pencil here, which is actually really convenient because I found that before, I would always have it separate or like missing or sometimes I forget my pencil case, which is where I was keeping it. Then I also like this because you can fold it in different ways and have it either working like this, so slightly raised, or if you want to watch something and have it raised like this, this is another option. This is one thing that I really like. It is a little bit on the heaviside, which I would say is it's only con. Before that I was using this a much slimmer profile cases, also smart case, when you open it, the iPad turned on and when you close it the iPad turned off, which is nice. But I dropped it one too many times and it cracked on the corner. The iPad was still safe so I will say the case is good in that regard. But I figured that since I'm on the go a lot with my iPad, I should get something a little bit more protective but still had a slim profile. If you're at home a lot and is using iPad there I don't really worry too much about dropping it. I would actually go for the slimmer case, because it's just lighter to use and make your hands less tired or you're working on your lap, it's just nicer, and then just get a sleeve. I was using like a wool sleeve to stick it in if I ever did need to transport it for whatever reason. But those are just what I use, there's a ton of options on Amazon and all the stores. Get what you think looks best or like feels best for you but I did a ton of research in this regard so just wanted to share my tips there. Lastly, a final quick word on the iPad Pro versus Wacom Intuos, which is the large desktop tablets that you have probably seen attached to your computer and works like the Wacom Intuos pros, but is an actual screen and you draw on top of it. When I first started, I was totally envious as these things, would be cost thousands of dollars. I knew I wasn't going to jump into it right away. I think now understanding my work flow, I will be investing in one as I tend to draw these very large digital illustrations, and it would be very nice to be able to have that workspace. That said, I think for a hobbyist or a beginner, the iPad Pro is way better in terms of the value for your money and also convenience. This might be an obvious point, but the iPad Pro has a lot of other features, so you can use it as an iPad, so you play games on it, and look at photos, and all your social media but the desktops and ticks are just a drawing tablet. So not talk about the Wacom mobile studio pros, but just the sun peaks, which are amazing for drawing, but you can't do anything else with it, and they tend and super big and heavy. I almost say they're not really comparable, I would say the large ones are really great for pros and people who really need that kind of power but when it comes to just having something that's a good investment, high-quality, but can do everything well, I would say get the iPad Pro. That is everything in my hardware recommendation section. Let's go into software, where I'll talk about Procreate, Photoshop and the other apps that I considered before landing on those two as my main workhorses when it comes to my digital painting process. I'll see you there.
5. Recommendations: Software Tools: Now let's talk about which programs to use for digital painting. When it comes to deciding which software to use, figuring out what you need depends on your goals and personal preferences, of course. I'll walk you through my experience and thoughts on the pros and cons between Procreate and Photoshop. Then break out my recommendations based on common user types. Before we get into those two, you're probably wondering, are those might only two options? No. There are many other programs out there and some are especially better suited for certain tasks such as Clip Studio Paint for comics drawings. But to me, these are the main contenders when it comes to digital painting in general. When I started out on the iPad, I tried a ton of apps from Tayasui Sketch to Adobe sketch program to Paper by Fifty Three. I think Procreate might have a slightly higher learning curve than all of these, but it's definitely the best in terms of ease of use balanced with powerful features. As for Photoshop, there is a free desktop alternative called GIMP, but I've never tried it personally, and I hear it's more of a great alternative for photo editing rather than digital drawing. Adobe's full Creative Suite made more sense for me and my workflow, so Photoshop is definitely my go-to. Here's how you find Procreate on the App Store really quick. You navigate to the App Store on your iPad, and then you just come here, search Procreate, and it looks like this. You will also have the price since I already have it, it will say update here. But just to give you a glimpse at all the types of work that you can create and procreate. It's really amazing and the reviews reflect how many people enjoy using this. For Photoshop, you can actually get that through Adobe's Creative Cloud. You can get a free trial and then give it a go, and after that, it's just $10 a month. In a nutshell, I think procreate is the future, but there are some things at the moment and a more advanced level that only Photoshop can do. If you just want to focus on illustration and digital painting, Procreate is really all you need. You can see even from the sample work that professionals are able to create amazing pieces with just this app. It's also an incredible deal at its fixed price point and it's very convenient. The main pro, to me is that Procreate is mobile. You can create anywhere when you're on your iPad. It's simple, and it's super intuitive, and it's way cheaper than getting a antique a computer and a Creative Cloud subscription. Plus it's constantly being updated and has a great community. I also want to point out that Procreate's Time-lapse capture is amazing. So what that means is that when you are drawing in Procreate, as long as you keep this default function on, there is an ability where they have a time lapse recording of what you're drawing. So when he hit Time-lapse Replay, you'll see the illustrations come to life and it somehow doesn't take up that much storage. So I have this Time-lapse Replay available for every single one of my Procreate drawings, and even on the smallest storage capacity iPad, it's not created any problems. So I find that to be really impressive. Now, what about Photoshop? I will be careful not to confuse Adobe's iPad drawing apps such as Sketch and Adobe Draw with Adobe Photoshop, it's desktop application. The main pro for me is being able to easily organize layers and use non destructive adjustment and masking layers. If you're not familiar with those terms, I'll definitely get into them later. But in summary, it's just more powerful and more flexible than what the current iPad drawing apps are able to do. It's also way better for design and using art boards and creative ways to save out assets, which again, I'll get into more later. For someone like me who needs to, for example, create different dimensions of illustrations to fit into, for example, mobile versus websites for clients, it's much better for my workflow to have that all organized in Photoshop rather than in something like Procreate. But on the other hand, for the initial process, I still really like drawing it on the Procreate app and then moving it into Photoshop. Another thing is that files in Photoshop can be much larger than it is on the iPad. I still also feel that Photoshop's brushes provide more flexibility when readjusting for size. In conclusion, if you're just drawing digitally as a hobbyist and are debating between the two, I'd say go with the iPad Pro and Procreate. It overall costs less, is super enjoyable to use, and you can do all you really need on it. Plus watching your Time-lapse is surprisingly fun. If, on the other hand, you potentially want to become a professional illustrator or digital artist, Photoshop may be the better choice to learn if you have to choose just one. It's also really easy to pick up Procreate afterwards if you already know how to paint in Photoshop. Finally, if you're already using Photoshop, I highly recommend tackling Procreate as it can really improve your workflow and allow you to work from anywhere. Before we move on, I want to make a quick note about the difference between pixels and vectors. Digital illustration and digital art generally refers to both. Procreate and Photoshop, both paint with pixels, which you can think of as individual little dots. It allows for really fine details and beautiful gradients and textures. On the other hand, Adobe Illustrator and iPad apps such as Autodesk Sketch and Adobe Draw use vectors, which forms images through mathematical path calculations. This means you can get super smooth graphics, which is great for things like logos and graphic art, but also feel a little less like actual painting. So it's not as great for things like textural concept art. As someone who likes traditional drawing, I enjoyed pixel painting way more than vector coloring as a feels more natural to me. On the other hand, there are people who feel they can't or don't like to color or draw the traditional way, because it really amazing, beautiful work with pads and shapes. I'll be focusing on pixel painting in this class, but wanted to explain that difference. A lot of the super clean graphic illustration you see was probably done with vectors. While the ones that seem like traditional art was probably done with pixels. That said, there's more and more overlap between the two these days, especially as Illustrator, gets better with textured brushes, and people figure out how to create smooth graphic looks in Photoshop. That's part of the reason why seeing everyone's different process is fun and enlightening. With that out of the way, let's get into my personal setup in Procreate and Photoshop. I'll see you in the next class.
6. My Setup: Procreate: With that other way, let's walk through the actual work spaces in Procreate and then Photoshop, and I'll also show you some of the custom set-ups that I have to speed up my workflow. Let's get started with Procreate. I personally find that the best way to learn is get a quick overview of the different tools and then just get started drawing and painting and you'll master the tools as they come up. There are some tools I'll never touch, but it's good to know they're there, so if I ever want to learn it, it's just a Google search and a tutorial video away. Let's jump into Procreate. I have the app right here and when you open yours for the first time, you'll see a few example digital paintings for you to take a look at. You won't see exactly what I show here because obviously these are all of my paintings that I've developed over the course of using the program. I'm going o change this setup, when you want to start a new one, you'll be going to here and setting up the canvas. I tend to use screen size the most often is just the default and I find it very easy, but of course, you can always create your own custom size if you would like. For this course, I recommend using the screen size because that's how I've sized the class example. Let's jump into that and I can show you how the actual workspace is set up. What's great about Procreate is that it seems very simple and it's very intuitive for someone to just start, jump in, turn on the brush tool, select the color, and start painting. That's really great and for beginners, I find that people get the hang of it or the idea of it really easily. At the same time within these few icons there's actually a lot of power and capability. As you start growing your skills in digital painting, this program can totally grow with you and you can see just by the samples that they provide with the app, that you can create some really amazing pieces with just this app itself. Let's start talking a little bit about how all the tools are laid out. The gallery will take you back to that home page that you just saw and here I would say is more like settings and adjustments, basic tools and then these letters will increase and decrease brush size, increase and decrease brush opacity. There's a shortcut button right here, which I'll explain in a bit and then undo and redo. Let's start with what you're probably most interested in, which is the brush tool. Procreate comes with a lot of great brush tools by default, and every single brush that I'm going to be using in this class example comes with the app. You don't need to worry about downloading anything special or creating any brushes. Just go with what's already in there. Of course, as you become more advanced, you'll probably be very curious about what other brushes there are. I had a lot of fun experimenting with different brushes. But at the end of the day, I think paring it down to five brushes that you really love using is ideal because it will streamline your processes and also develop a consistent look and feel across all of your drawings. The ones that I tend to use the most are the technical pen and that is for clean line work and you can find that under Inking, Technical Pen, the shale brush, which you can find under calligraphy right here and I love that for a really textured dry brush feeling and I probably use it the most in my painting these days. The dry ink is something that I like to use when I need something that is in between the two, so it has a thinner line and is great for lining, but it has a rough edge so it gives a little bit of texture. Then the round brush I use when I need a certain type of more water color or transparent type of feeling and I'll use it in backgrounds and you can find that under the painting category. Finally, the HB pencil, which you can find under sketching is the one I tend to use the most when I'm just sketching and just thinking about ideas. I put the ones I use most in this category up here. If you want to create your own, all you do is pull down and you'll find this plus sign and create a new grouping and just move the brushes that you like the most into there. What I like to do is actually create a duplicate version, so you can just slide left on any brush, duplicate it, and then drag it into your new category so that you don't need to worry about messing any of the original default brushes up and that is how my brushes are setup. In case you're curious on how each looks, feel free to go ahead and take some time right now to play with those. But I can show you really quick, that's the technical pen and depending on how hard I press, it can be very thin, or much thicker and that's what's great about using the Apple pencil with the iPad Pro. It can tell how hard you're pressing and it will feel like drawing on real paper, so if you used a very light touch on paper you'd have a thin line, if you pressed harder, you would have a thicker line. The shale brush is, the one I mentioned earlier, so if I have a small brush and press really lightly, it has that thin textured line which is great for detailing and at the biggest size and pressing hard, it creates these great, gorgeous brushstrokes. Next is dry ink. Again, I can create these very thin lines and then also thicker lines like that, so you can see it's in between these two, it's more of a pen, but it has a rough edge which I really like. The round brush looks like this, small, thin painterly lines, which I really like. This is probably one of the best brushes in terms of having opacity because it really feels like a watercolor brush, so if I paint very lightly, it has this great look and it layers on top of each other. If you like this watercolor effect, I highly recommend this brush and then obviously the harder you press, the more opaque it becomes. Finally, the HB pencil can create very realistic looking pencil lines and it gets really small too, so if you want to create more small detail pencil work, you can see that it would be very suitable for that as well. Those are the five main brushes that I use and we'll be using in this class. Next is the smudge tool. The smudge tool is exactly what it sounds like. Again, you can use any other brushes that it comes with for all of these tools. Just to show you what the smudge tool looks like, I'll do a quick demo here. Say I have this color and then I put this lighter color next to it. I almost never use the smudge tool, but I want to show you what it's good for. People who like to blend their colors so you have a more oil painting or traditional painting look will find this to be very useful. You can create these really smooth blending transitions, which is definitely a type of look and then the Eraser tool is of course what it sounds like, but is very powerful. The way that I digitally paint is actually using the paintbrush and the Eraser tool just as much so I pretty much paint with the eraser. Say this is a blob that I have and I wanted to turn it into a star. One way that I could do that is to create more blobs and shapes, let me show you, like the overall composition and when I want to clean it up, I basically use the same brush. One shortcut to do that is say, I have the shale brush on. Just hold onto it and then you'll start erasing with the current active brush. The way I have this set up is that when I hold onto this shortcut button and use the pen tool, it will start erasing. It creates an edge just like as if I had painted with it, and I find that to be really helpful. It's almost like sculpting when you're painting, just taking away the parts that you don't want. But I find that back and forth of painting and then erasing helps me get to a more organic result rather than just going straight into it. That is the eraser tool and here are the layers. I remember when I started to draw painting, one of the coolest aspects or features of digital painting was that there are layers, something that I take for granted and seems very normal now. But the best thing about layers is that you're able to adjust, and modify, and fix, or enhance things on specific areas without affecting anything else on a different layer. If that sounds confusing to you let me just do a really quick example of what that means. Traditionally, say I was creating a painting, and I was just doing everything on one layer just like drawing on paper in real life, and it looks something like this. It looks great, kind of happy with it but I wish that I hadn't made this navy blue part there. I just want to move it a little bit. Traditionally, you would probably have to either start over, or I could try to fix it manually like try to erase the top here, draw this part in, and then fix it like this. But then it starts affecting other parts and it can get messy and sometimes there is no real undo. Of course, if I wanted to say erase something, it would affect all three. Having layers on the other hand, allows you to really plan ahead and be able to fix things, or change things without destroying anything on the other layer. Now see it's a very similar painting and it looks the same to the eye, but because they're on different layers I can actually just get rid of this blue layer if I decide I don't really want that part. Or if I want to move it I can just move each piece individually and that's very, very handy. I would say that as I was learning how to digitally paint, I always wanted to get to a point where I could do everything on one layer because for whatever reason I thought that that meant that I really knew how to digitally paint. Now that I've gone back and forth, or reached where I wanted to be when I thought that, I find that I still really like working in layers but just in a more thought out way. Of course, just painting and being able to work in a very seamless manner is really nice. I don't want to keep going onto different layers if I already know what I'm going to do. There is that aspect of keeping everything on one layer. But on the other hand, say I wanted to animate a part, or just use it in different contexts, of course, this is going to be way more helpful to keep certain parts on separate layers versus recreating it every time. Don't worry about using it as whether it's a handicap, or a learning tool for now, use layers to your advantage. I think that they are one of the best aspects of digital painting. The undo and redo is available here but I tend to use the double tap for undo, and the triple tap for redo way more often. It just speeds up my workflow and I hardly ever use these buttons down here. This is what I will call the shortcut key. This has a lot of different functions and you can set it up to be custom to your workflow and I use it all the time. When I tap it it brings up the Eyedropper so I can get any color from the palette, and that's the after color now. When I touch it and use the pen tool that's when the eraser tool comes up. That's a good segue actually into the settings. Under the wrench tool is a bunch of different actions. Everything is pretty self explanatory, and I don't want to get too caught up in the leads. If you have a question on that I don't cover Procreate's user guide is actually super thorough and really great. But really quickly, here's an image and you can insert a file or insert a photo into your canvas and, of course, take a photo, I've never ever used that function. Cut, Copy, Copy Canvas piece is very self explanatory, but I use the three finger pull down to bring up the quick menu way more often, I don't think I've actually ever gone up here to select that. Then Canvas, you can turn on a Drawing Guide, which is helpful. Let me just show you really quick. What that means you can turn on like a 2D grid if that helps you. There's an isometric view and then you can set up a vanishing point which is really awesome if you draw in a perspective. Then symmetry which is basically, if you draw on this side it mirrors it on the other side automatically and people do some really great symmetrical art. You can set up your drawing grid however you want, and then turn it on and off here. I do use Flip Canvas Horizontally a lot more often, because I find that really helps you make sure that your composition is balanced. A lot of times I'll draw things a lot more like right leaning for whatever reason and when I flip it horizontally I can fix it. It's really helped me grow in my drawing skills because the more I do it, the more I automatically know how to correct and I don't have to use this as much to check. Sharing is how you can export from the file itself. You can export other Procreate file PSD which is awesome because then you can directly send it to Adobe Photoshop which is what I do often, a PDF, a JPEG, a PNG, and a TIFF. If you don't know what some of these terms are don't worry about it for now, I'll have a separate export section where I go over the common file formats that I tend to use the most. Another really great feature about Procreate is that it automatically has this time lapse recording. As you're drawing it records all of your brush strokes and you can replay it, and then I'm sure you've seen it on Instagram or on websites, it just use really quick replays of the whole process. You can export it, you can have a live broadcast, and you can always turn it off if you decide you don't want it for whatever reason. But I actually have the smallest capacity iPad Pro and I've never had an issue with storage which is I don't know how they do it, but that's really amazing. I recommend keeping it on because you never know when you're going to want to watch it. Finally, in preferences there are some very self explanatory things. You can have a light interface and that's totally based on your preference. I tend to work in the dark interface. For left-handed users you might want to move this to the left side so that you're drawing with your right hand and can quickly adjust it here. The brush cursor I like to keep turned on it just means when I'm drawing it has that preview stamp looking thing instead of, let me show you what it looks like without it. Now I don't have that preview icon, like that little circle. Now you can see there's like this outline, by having the brush cursor turned on. Then you can Airplay the canvas which it displays on a second monitor, and I've never adjusted any of these default settings but you can obviously suit it to how you want it to be. Third party stylus if for whatever reason you're not using Apple Pencil, if you are using Apple Pencil it'll automatically connect so you don't need to worry about that. Then Edit Pressure Curve, I think that's too advanced for a beginner but basically you can go into those settings and adjust how the iPad reacts to how hard you're pressing the screen. Gesture Controls, on the other hand, I do think is super important to think about, because it can really speed up your workflow as you get more into digital painting. A lot of the tools that I've just described are accessible through different gestures. You can customize it so that the ones you end up using the most are the easiest to access. For example, I use erase all the time and I have it setup so when I for whatever reason want to erase with my finger, I can do it that way. I also have it so that using a shortcut key plus the Apple Pencil erases as well. On the other hand, if I use the Smudge tool all the time, I probably would want to have that be the touch function, so I prefer the shortcut key with Apple Pencil. Instead, I have it setup with a shortcut that I don't use very often, just in case I want to use it, but to be honest I'd play at that point we just go out to the Smudge tool. Assisted Drawing If you want to turn that on you can setup your own shortcuts. I don't really use that very often, so I don't have it setup that way. The Eyedropper tool, as I've mentioned, helps select any color from your canvas and since I use that all the time I have it set up so that it's super easy to access. QuickMenu is actually something that should be really helpful in theory, but I find that I very rarely use it probably because it takes me out of my workflow. I have it setup so that the four finger tap will bring it up, and let me just show you really quick how that looks like. I can tap with four fingers and basically six tools will pop up and I can really quickly just hit that and go to Shale Brush which is cool. I tap it again, say I want to go to Selection Tool and I can do that. Tap it again, then I go to Transform Tool. I can see that really being helpful to some people. For me for whatever reason I don't, I find it just easier as to tap these buttons and I'm still thinking through maybe better ways to use it. But it's just another feature that's there, it's like if you flip horizontally it could be a cool function. I would say put things that are harder to access like maybe something that's buried in here that you tend to use a lot, and put it into your shortcuts. To edit it all you have to do is bring it up and then hold onto it, and you can set the action. Basically almost all the actions are available for you to customize. Full screen is great for people who don't like to work with the UI on. I use the tools all the time so I tend to just leave it on there. But if you want to just have it be an empty canvas, this is the place that you can quickly access it. Clear Layer is what it sounds like you clear out the layer. I have it set to something that will be hard to trigger by accident though I have it setup to be a scrub. I'm on this layer and say I'm like painting and I don't really like it for whatever reason I want to start all over, I just scrub back and forth with three fingers. Copy and Paste is what it sounds like. I have it turned on so that three fingers swipe down will bring it up. I find it much handier than trying to go up there and turning it on. But again, you could even set up in your quick menu if you prefer that. Finally, Layer Select, touch hold on the layer to select. Say I have a few different layers going on, and I'm painting on this blue area now and I want to go back to the pink layer really quick. I just hold on to that area, and then I can quickly switch to the pink layer, so now I'm on there. Finally, there's a General section. I always have this turned on and rotate with pinch zoom. I use it all the time. I think it's the default setting and then I don't have this obviously, because I use touch actions all the time. Don't worry about it too much for now, you're welcome to set it up the way that I have just so that you can follow along exactly like what I do or, of course, if you find that there's certain actions you tend to go to more often, customize it for you. The whole purpose of this Gesture Control panel is to take advantage of the touch and pencil functions of an iPad and really streamline your process.
7. My Setup: Photoshop: Now let's talk a little bit about Photoshop's layout in my setup there. But please note that this is going to be the condensed version since I don't use Photoshop as much in my digital painting process, and i don't want to overwhelm you with information. I'm just going to show you the pieces that I use the most. I've just opened Photoshop CC, and these are some of my recent files. Let's start with "Create New". Here you can open up some of Photoshop's precepts. We have some examples here. These are all pretty self-explanatory. We can also make our own, similar to Procreate. There's options for you to set things up as Pixels, Inches, Centimeters, Millimeters. What's a lot more powerful and flexible than Procreate, is that it's not set in stone, so you can set it up however you want. I would say make sure your resolution is correct. You want to make a print, make sure you're painting at 300 DPI. That's just how many pixels per inch there are. It is just for web, you can push down to 72, which is a common resolution number. You don't want your file size to get too big. But I would say if you're not sure, [inaudible] is of higher resolution, and you can always see that out at a web friendly size later on. I have it set up at eight by ten inches. Background contents are white and the color profile is working RGB. It's an extra RGB that I like because it can be adaptable to CMYK, which is the color profile for prints, or RGB, which is a code profile that is best suited for digital. Now you can create that. You'll see that you have a blank Canvas here. For a beginner beginner, I would say that Photoshop can seem really intimidating. There's so many tools, so many functions, so many windows. When you open the first time yours is going to look a little bit different because I customized my workspace. I'm just going to walk through the parts that I think are most important to a beginner. Then explain a little bit on why I have my workspace setup this way. For Photoshop, there's many ways to do the same thing. As you probably know, if you're familiar with any sort of processing program, you need to have a "File", You go to "Save As', or they have these shortcuts provided here. You can hit Shift Command S, and do the same thing. There's so many instances of that in Photoshop that I think the best way is actually to seek the time to learn the keyboard shortcuts. If you're planning to get serious with Photoshop, I found that saved so much time. It's pretty fun in a way. It's almost like learning the piano because now I do almost everything through the keyboard. Let's suppose that you hovered over it with your mouse. Photoshop will show you what the shortcut is. This is V. I'll create a link and the tutorial that sends you to all the shortcuts. I would print it out and then have it at your desk and learn it. Eventually you will memorize it like I have now, and it becomes second nature to you, and it'll speed up your workflow so much. Everything else here you'll learn as you go. But if you just hover over it, it'll explain what it is and how to use it. They even have these handy little videos that they did not have when I was first learning how to use these that are actually quite helpful. This is a selecting tool. One thing you might not know is that if you right-click on these as if they have this tiny little arrow in the corner. That means there's more functions hidden inside that you can pick. When I right click on this, this is a Lasso selection tools. You can select the organic sheet, or you can select this one Magnetic or a Polygonal Lasso Tool. We'll just hover over this You can learn everything, but I tend to use obviously the Move tool the most. You right-click it. I don't know why, but with the Artboard Tool in here as well, I feel like that should just be separate and that's all on its own. I use the Lasso tool to select. That's the shortcut key L. I use the Eyedropper tool at time, and the Brush, and the Eraser tool. For graphic design, I might use a Text tool, but in this class I'm not going to cover that, just digital painting. Just know that these things are there. Crop tool, if you plan on cropping your Canvas, but there's other ways to do that, which I will show you later in this class. Let's focus on the Brush tool and the Eraser tool for now. With the tools out of the way, let's talk about these windows. All of these, windows are customizable and in so many ways. But you can go up here and whatever is check-marked is what will show. As a digital artist, I would say that the windows that you'll most likely have opened is for Sharp Brushes, the Color Picker. I find libraries actually to be very helpful in Photoshop. Basically, in Creative Cloud, you can create a library, and it syncs across all of Adobe's programs so that my when I open, this Libraries, panel and Illustrator may seem color palettes and little graphics are saved there as well. History panel is going to be useful, especially as a beginner if you want to go back in history. But of course you always Command Z for undo. Another panel that tend to have opened is Actions. I'll show you how to create one of those. Basically allows you to set up shortcuts. I tend to do [inaudible] often and all you have to do actually, to create that is when you're not in Button Mode. You can create New. I'll just that one I'll call it Flip Vertical. I like to assign a color and hit Record. This little red dot is going to be on. Now anything that you do, Adobe is going to record and turn it into an action. I go to "Image Rotation", "Flip Canvas Vertical". That will flip the document. If I want to flip just the layer and not the little document, I will "Edit", "Transform", "Flip Vertical" and now just that layer has flipped. I'm going to stop that. Now, I'll go Button Mode. Now I have this new button action and whenever I tap it, I can go cripple much more easily than going through all that menu selection. The ones that I have set up for flip horizontal. I should have used Flip Vertical, very often. Content whereas something that's more for photo editing and something that I don't use very often, digital painting. Let's skip that and add noise. I also think adding noise is something that I like to use pretty often. Demonstrate a little bit more. We'll find that these are very smooth, solid colors. Sometimes at the end of a finished piece that line just a little bit more texture, I can add noise. The way that you would normally do that is you're going to "Filter", "Noise", "Add Noise". Pick your pixels set, "O". But the recording a command, I can use Flip Add Noise. Finally I have the Layers panel open where just like in procreate, you can better manage your drawing by having different pieces of your drawing on different layers. That's the fundamentals of the pieces that I use in Photoshop. You'll find that Procreate actually just takes all the things you really need in Photoshop, and puts it into a very streamlined and well organized app. But they're still all other the things that I can't do it in procreate that I need to do in Photoshop. I will explain more of that later when we get to the exporting of the example. For now, I think that this is all you really need to know in terms of the basic setup of Photoshop. Let's go into the next class.
8. My Process: Color and Details: Now they're all set up, let's get into the actual class example process, where I'll show you my full workflow going from Procreate over to Photoshop. Again, you're welcome to use the line drawing that I've provided in the class description so you can get started more easily. Here I have Procreate open. Normally you would set up a new canvas. In this case, I will have the class example open and show you how to import a photo. You go to "the Settings button" and then hit "Image", insert a photo, and pick the PNG that you've selected, and it will place it onto your canvas. Turn on the background color so you see it. But it's a PNG file, which you can see has a transparency which will come in handy in a bit. I have the color palette that I've established for this drawing. Just a quick note about color, I personally think that especially for beginners, it's nice to have a limited color palette to work from so that you're not overwhelmed. Part of the appeal, of course, of digital painting is that you have every color imaginable, accessible to you. But at the same time that can sometimes get overwhelming in heart to really feel like your finished painting is cohesive and really tight together. If you want a little bit of guidance in terms of how to pick colors make sure you know a little bit about complementary colors. Basically, complementary colors are ones that are across from each other and you can also think about in triads as well in terms of what would work well. But some very common combinations are blue and orange, green and red. I tend to like to use ones that are in-between the spectrum. I use a lot of blueish-greens with orange, peach colors then I tend to have an extra color, in this case teal to complement those, but that can really be up to you. For example, I showed in my last class quickly demonstrate here as well. An orange or a golden color could really be a great compliment as well or even darker version of the peach color, or if I want to have more of a great compliment color that really creates a more mature look and feel. So it's really up to you. Now that we have our basic color palette picked out, and don't worry, we'll always be able to go back and edit it later. Let's get into the actual roughing in of color and how I like to block things out and then go back in in detail. So it's a slow way of build-up process. This was design that I finished in the last skill set class. It has some landmark already set and I'll show you how I keep and either erase or hide the parts that you don't want to use. But let's get into the actual coloring. Let's go to layers, and here, let's rename this line works. It's good practice to start labeling all your layers and keeping things organized. So you just tap on the name and then this keyboard will pop up and that creates a new layer now. There are two ways that you can go about doing this as your first painting sample. You can either put the layer underneath the line work or you can put it above it, and I'll show you what the difference is. Let's rename this really quick. Bottom color. This will look a little bit more like a coloring book. Select the brush that you want to use. Again, I'm using the shale rush and using the eyedropper shortcut, I can pick from my three colors. Let's start with this cap. I am going to color him this cool color so let's fill that in. You'll see that the coloring is coming out underneath the line. One thing I'd like to do is to keep the colors focus, but when I need a lighter color, what I'll do is just go to the color palette and pick a lighter version of that color. All I did is just go over to the right. You can also use the different views if you prefer, either picking from something like this and you can use these toggles to adjust it a little bit more precisely and you can also do it by value. But I personally find that the disk is the most intuitive for me because right here basically you make it brighter and less saturated, and then if you want to change the hue you just use the outside circle. Here I've picked a lighter version and you can compare it to the color that you had last selected. Let me just color in his spots. Again, here's a good opportunity if you want to put it on another layer. If say I changed my mind and I've colored this in in the little pieces and either I think that's not dark enough or that's too bright, I can always adjust it separately. That's looking pretty good to me. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll experiment on one layer and decide once it's good enough for I'm happy with it, I'll merge it down. That's totally up to you, whether you feel comfortable upfront of just keeping all your color on one layer, I would say that just keep things simpler and more straight forward. Now let's pick this teal color and do the same thing on the cactus. Maybe just to bring in a little bit of that color, we can do his horns and maybe his flips. You can say that this is already done. I think it's perfectly fine. You can go about and just do the same thing on the other ones. Let's just do this house, for example, really quick. Let's pick a navy color for that. This is how I personally like to color but there are definitely other ways. Some people like to use the selection tool and just select the part that they want to have colored in. Then you can go here and hit "Fill" and it'll fill that layer in. The reason I don't use that as often is it just doesn't feel as intuitive to me because I like the actual action of drawing and painting. But you could only do that and then add the texture and the brushes on top of that. You can really start to see how the shortcuts really come in handy, like tapping this, being able to pick the color right here really smooths out my workflow versus having to either go here and always keep picking one from my color palette, and or constantly adjusting it manually. I think what's also great is that you can go in here and just because of the nature of the texturing busters, a lighter version of that color already in there. For example, I can put it on this edge right here, and then I'll pick the coral color just to add a little highlight right here. Maybe color in this little planet. When I add a little bit more interests get this color on the background of the leaves a little bit and a little highlight right here. You can consider finished as well. Go through it if you would like this approach and have it more like a coloring book style. I would say that this is very beginner friendly and will help you really get the hang of painting without worrying too much about how to finalize it. The other approach, I would say is, let's turn this off. If you want to develop more of the painting style itself and not rely so much on linework is that you can do the coloring on top of the lines and I'll show you how that might look. In this sense, you're really using the lines more as a guide on where to lay down your color. You'll have to keep revisiting the line to make sure that the final paint work looks like what you had in mind, but the lines are no longer containing or guiding your color. Starting from the same thing, let's do the cow again. Now you can see that because this layer is on top of our line work, the color is going over the lines and eventually hiding it. Let's just color him in. This is how I tend to paint more often now, I find that I have a greater control over the end result and I like the look of a more paint truly feel and just adding in the lines only where it's truly necessary. I will say that this is a little bit more advanced and something that you might want to pick up after you've just got in the swing of how to digitally paint and color itself. But if you feel ready to jump into this, then you're definitely welcome to. But that will look like when you turn offline life is that you're starting to have these colorful shapes. You'll see that this is definitely a more painterly style that some people like more, and what I recommend is if you want more of a clear guide, you can always duplicate the line work, put it on top, and then set this to multiply. So what that means is that this layer is now going to react with all the layers below it and blend into those layers so that you can see the layers beneath it and it's not being blocked. When you hit "Multiply," you'll see that those lines now go all the way through. Then if you double-tap it, it turns on the opacity layer adjustment. I just turn that all the way down so that is more really just a guide or almost we can think of it as tracing paper. I'll create another layer on top of that line work for the details. Let's put detail color. Now it's starting to become a lot more defined. What's nice is that you can edit these on separate layers, like I was mentioning earlier so if you decide that there's something in the alignment that you don't like or you want to clean up a little bit, you can do so very easily without having to worry to mess up your bottom layer color. Let's just focus on this one a little bit and detail it out. I like to look at this dark blue line on top of the color. So I'm going to keep working on that and just add a little bit over here. I think that's looking pretty good and maybe I can add a little pink right here. This is actually a technique that I like to use a lot is to add the complimentary colors and highlight areas that you might not expect but it really helps tie the image together so let's add a little bit there. Feel free to experiment. You can always double-tap to undo, but you'll see that it adds a nice bit of dimension to it. So it's really easy to adjust with these things too. Say, I feel like this spot on the cow is a little bit too close to this one and I want it to be a little more balanced so I can hit the detailed color layer, use the Selection Tool, select it and use the Move tool. I would turn magnetics off on this one. So let's put this here. You can see that it's really nice about having it on separate layers at this point, is that if I hadn't had this detail color on another layer, when I did that, it would have moved all of my color over, which isn't necessarily what I want. Having this separate layers really allows you a lot more fine control. Let's turn our landmark back on. You can imagine going through the rest of these in the same way, and it would just have the two different coloring styles. Pick the approach that's right for you, finish out this drawing, and then let's talk more about the next steps.
9. My Process: Export (+ Extra Photoshop Perks!): [MUSIC]. Now, I have to finish drawing. I went with a combination of color on top, and some line work, and of course, you'll probably have many layers if you're experimenting with color. But, I wanted to talk a little bit about, once you're done and happy with your drawing, how to export your drawing. I think this is probably one of Procreate's greater limitations and for me, since I have to export in various formats, I tend to use Photoshop for this next step. But, if you're just casually painting and learning for the first time, I just want to share with friends, or save it to a folder, Procreate is more than enough. Let me just go over really quickly, back over to the actions and share. From here, you can save it as a JPEG and save image, and then all assigned to your photos, which is very handy. Say I want to save it with a transparent background for whatever reason because I want to put it on top of something else, like a photograph. I can trap background color, and now you see that the drawing is transparent, and then I'll save it as a PNG, again, save Image and it's saved to your photos. You save it as a PSD, which means that it will preserve all other layers and keep it in Adobe Photoshop friendly format. You can save it, make sure you send it to yourself, via the inbox or save it to drive, however, you want to export it. I find drop to be super handy when I'm working between procreate and Photoshop, so that's what setup for me right there. That's pretty much it, I will say the main limitation for me, is that, procreate doesn't allow you to change the canvas size, nor does it let you change the DPI versus how many pixels per inch you have in your drawing, which is not a big deal if you're a beginner, but, you can become, a hustle if you have to see exporting for print versus exporting for web. I would say that is one of the main limitations, and let's move from here to Photoshop. I can explain a little bit of my setup there, some of the overlaps with procreate, and how I take advantage of Photoshop's tools and capabilities where procreate falls a little bit short. My work for now is that, I'll do all of my digital artwork on procreate and not really need to move it to Photoshop, until I'm close to final exporting stage. Line work, sketching, color, I can do almost everything on procreate now, which is awesome, and I'm trying to move as much of my workflow, to the iPad as possible because, it helps me to stay really mobile and flexible. I'm hoping that some of the functions that are about to explain that, I have to go to Photoshop for, they'll eventually bring into procreate. It's really easy to export, for Photoshop, all you have to do is go to actions and then hit PSD, and because, I have an iPad and the MacBook, I can use this function called AirDrop, It automatically transfers it over. But of course, if you have a PC or don't have the same apple family, then you just send it to yourself by e-mail or save it to a drive and then download it onto your computer from there, I'm going to tap that, and allow the PSD to add up to the computer. Now let's move over to Photoshop. Save that, I have this open, and I need to, open up and still share example. I use drop it over into Photoshop, and now let's talk a little bit about what, I really like Photoshop for. One of the main drawbacks and procreate is that, I can't export this drawing in any other size than the original canvas size, that I created when I first started drawing. Of course, since I prepared this drawing for class, I already designed it to fit within the framework and everything is kind of centered. But, usually when I'm designing for the first time, it's not always the case, I know exactly how I need the final canvas to be, or what color mode I need it to be, or how I want to save it out. This is where Photoshop is really helpful. The straightforward approach is obviously used to file and save. You can also use, of course, instructions such as command save or Shift Command save you want to save as desktop. So, on the format, you can obvious save it in whatever format you need, as JPEG, PNG, Photoshop. But, what's really helpful, especially for web, is typically shift control command export, or if you use file, and export, I still like save for Web, which is like a see feature, can also quick export as PNG, export as preferences, what's going to save for Web Legacy? Here, what's really great is that you can change things. Using same PST file without having to affect anything, you can say that you want to save as JPEG, PNG. JPEG for now. Then you can determine the quality of how it saves out, which you cannot do in procreate. You can't say you want to embed the color profile, which means that when someone else opens it on their computer, they will have the color profile already with the file. Then, you can save and convert to sRGB, which is a color profile, and then change the image size, to say I only need it to be 1000 pixels. I can suggest that here, or even just say like all I want to be half the size, 50 percent. Then I save it out, and I will save it as a JPEG with this specs, and that's just very handy. Let's save this as skill share class JPG 1000 pixels, does not have that, but it hasn't affected this PSD file at all. So, image size, of this is still the original of what I got from procreate. I would say that, it's always best to start big because, it's easier to save that than a smaller size. Would be try to start from a smaller file size, if bigger, you might lose quality. To my quick tips, if you're drawing for the web, 72 DPI is more than enough. That means how many pixels, about pixels per inch, and 72 is a custom web work resolution, procreate defaults to a 132, from my experience. Then for prank usually only have 300 DPI, and I want to make this upright. I'm going to set it 300 DPI want it to be printable at least, around 11 by 14. This is really handy, so I can do 11 by 14, which I will set that out. You notice that it was like 14 by 6-7-3 inches, Canvas size and image size, the difference is images, the whole file drawing and canvas size is what the drawing is sitting on. Imagine a painting canvas and I can crop that by 14 inches. Now, the frame which it sits in now 14 inches. If I had done that through image size, it would have squashed the image into 14 inches, instead of cutting off the actual painting canvas. Another great feature about Photoshop is that, I can create art boards, like I mentioned earlier. Say I want to create a series of prints for this. I want there to be an 8 by 10, I want there to be any 11 by 14 and want to be a web friendly version that's a smaller resolution. I can set that up like this. I'm going to crop these close by 11 by 14. I went to the art board tool over here and can destroy the operating. I'm usually pretty smart and will snap to these areas. You can double check up here that the width and the height is, as you expected, 11 by 14. let's call this art photo 11 by 14. Of course, you need to save out multiple PSP files with 8 by 19 version, and 11 my 14 version, because magic, that's nice to have them altogether. You make sure they all match and feel cohesive. It's just one last file to worry about, so I'm going to create another art photo on this side, let's say,8 by 10. Let's draw a rectangle and you can make more specific here. 8 by 10 prints and I'll basically duplicate this over. [MUSIC] Then shortcut for that actually is Command J, so you right click. There's so many things like that in Photoshop where it's the same function, there's just different ways to get there, so don't be overwhelmed by seeing all of the possibilities, just learn what you need to learn. Move that over and now I can resize it with Command T, which is transform and that resizes this one. Again, it's a very handy function that Procreate does not have. Since I can kind of eyeball the margins here. Okay These are two versions I like. Now I can export these Art course. You can right click on the artwork and go to click "Export as PNG" or export as and do the same process I described earlier. You can select the file format, image size, Canvas size, whether you want to have metadata or not embed the color profile and all of that accessible to you there. An amazing feature of Photoshop that I really love, especially for graphic design or say I wanted to save different versions of these automatically is that there is a function called image generate. What it is, is that, I'll include a link that provides a more thorough guide, but just means your art boards or any layer with an appropriate extension. Say I wanted a transparent line only version of this, then I can name this top-line PNG. I just go to File, generate image assets and then I'm going to make sure that this Skillshare class example PSD is saved onto my computer. As long as this image assets piece it's turned on, it will automatically generate those files for you. You can imagine that that would really come in handy when you wanted to see about specific pieces of a drawing or when you wanted to create many different versions of something without having to keep exporting it one-by-one. Those are just a few features that I really like Photoshop for and there's so many more that we can get into but in terms of exporting, those are the main ones. Again, think about how you want to export whether it's for web or for prints and whether you want to have different sizes, whether once you input your Procreate file, you want to update the image and the Canvas size and DPI or the color mode. For example, if you want to print on, give it to a printer, usually prefer sRGB or CMYK and if it's just for web then RGB is better. Those are all a little bit more detailed than the beginner might need to know, but just know that there's a lot more exporting functions in Photoshop compared to Procreate. Now I actually want a little bit more about how I use Procreate beyond something that's a little bit more straightforward, a when worky like this. Started working on a brand pattern for our studio and this is something that I created in Procreate and now that I'm happy with the overall design, I've brought it into Photoshop, you'll see all the different layers that I have here. I find that Photoshop is easier for me to do management and grouping and moving things around. I really like it, like I mentioned earlier, for all the different exploiting options. A lot of these individual pieces are on separate layers and I like to name them so I'll say this is, light blue small piece and I'll name it PNG and then this blue streak right here, I'll just name them all so that we can export as individual assets. Photoshop I find is also a little bit easier for me to move things around and adjust them. One of the best aspects of Photoshop that I want to show you is that they have a lot more non-destructive adjustment layers than Procreate currently has, but I have a feeling that Procreate is definitely working on it, I wouldn't be surprised if they caught up very soon. Just to show you what that might look like. Say this blue streak I want to play with the hue saturation. We can just use these adjustment layers and say I diffuse saturation. You can use it one of two ways, we can either adjust everything that's beneath it, so I'm playing with the saturation right now and you'll see that it's affecting all of the layers. Let's say I just want to play around with this specific blue streak, that's happening right here. What I can do is click this adjustment layer to that layer. I just right clicked on it and will create clipping mask and what this does is basically only affect the layer that is clipped to. Now you'll see that as I adjusting the hue, that's the only piece that's changing. It's a function that you've seen and Procreate, but now you can really specify, how your file is being manipulated. That can really come in handy especially when you're doing design and want to figure out like, maybe I make this a little bit darker and now it's creating this sense of depth right here. Then we can manipulate each one so each has a clipping mass. You can layer them on top of each other, say I want to make this one brighter, I'm going to add a brightness contrast adjustment layer, clip that onto that piece again and now you can see I'm adjusting the brightness of that layer only. Each adjustment layer actually has its own mask, you can say that you only want it to affect this layer and you only want to affect this part. All you do is this mask it out like I showed you in Procreate. I mask out this tip and now the adjustment layers only affecting or showing the parts that is not masked out. Now you're able to lay your mask by right-clicking here and disable, you can toggle it on and off and see what that looks like. Using this eye icon it will control whether it is showing or not. Once I have this in a place that I'm happy with, what is also handy is that you can flatten all visible layers by hitting "Shift Option Command E" what it will do is create a new layer with all of those pieces merged together which I find to be very helpful whether I want to just export something or just play around with a flattened piece to compare it to something else or to work with a different program instead of having to deal with all of the layers. One good example is when it comes to say you want to have a illustration set or a branding set, I move it over to the PSD file that have different art boards and now I can place it onto its own art board and make sure that it complements whatever else I'm working on. A lot of times I'll be working on an illustration set and I'll create different art boards and work on individual PSDs of each illustration. Then just link those flattened files onto art boards, put them next to each other to make sure that they really complement. I hope it starts to give you a glimpse into how Photoshop still has a lot of powerful capabilities that are helpful to digital artists beyond digital painting. I think Procreate really really makes sense if you just focused on trying to paint something for your own enjoyment as a hobby or as a strong social media, iPad is probably all you really need. Let's say you want to make some prints or you want to play around a little bit with graphic design and have a little bit more flexibility, Photoshop is still more powerful than Procreate and has a lot of functions that can really help you that Procreate has yet to add. That's my full workflow from beginning sketch to final export of the Photoshop assets. I hope that was helpful and obviously that's a lot of information to go over and feel free to go back and play things more slowly. If you have any questions on any parts definitely feel free to ask me in the class discussions and I would be happy to answer them. For now, I was thinking that it would be good to go over some more complex illustrations or different illustrations and talk through now that we know the basic workflow process, how that turned into these other illustrations.
10. Bonus Example: More Adjustments: In this video, I'm going show you a really simple painting to demonstrate some of Procreate's adjustment features really clearly. It'll also be good to show you how you can just start painting without any line work and just start experimenting. First, I want to put myself back in the position of when I was first starting out with digital painting and trying to figure out all the different tools and how do you incorporate that into what I was doing. It's going to be a big learning curve, so I would say one of the main things I want to express is that you shouldn't feel disappointed if what you're drawing doesn't match up to your favorite artist's drawing. Of course they've put in thousands of hours into what they're doing and a lot of times when you're watching a demo or time-lapse video, there's a lot of thought or experience that they have, that goes into it that you don't see anymore. In this example, I just want to quickly draw a house with some plants to keep things really simple in terms of shapes and colors and show you how you can use some of the digital tools at your disposal. These are different tools to experiment with adjustments and playing around with your design and being able to really be flexible without having to start all over. In this case, I am drawing out design that I have in my mind without any line work initially. But as a beginner, I really recommend just doing what helps you focus on digital painting first. If you already know what you want to draw flowers or you want to draw stars or something like that, then go for it. But if thinking about the drawing itself is holding you back, then start with the class sample or something else that's already ready to go so that you're not distracting yourself from what you're trying to learn. Let's just put some plants in front of it. This is a good example. I wasn't really sure whether I wanted a door here or not. I've already drawn those leaves there, so maybe originally might think, I can't really go back over to decide those leaves are there. But digital painting, that is not the case. I can put this door behind these leaves and then move these leaves around. Let me put that on a different layer. I did three-finger swipe down and then cut and paste, that puts the automatically onto a new layer, hit this ''Transform Key'' and just move it over. With this door, I don't love it, I don't hate it. Maybe what it is, is that it's just not quite the right size. Again, I put this on a new layer, I hit the ''Transform Button'' and let me see what looks like to smaller and I like that a lot more. You get the color isn't quite right, so with that still selected, I'm going to go to the hue saturation and play around with what a different color might look like. In this case, let's see. Let's try something brighter. Yeah, I thin I like the hue, which is a little bit too dark, so that fill look better to me. Now these other dark lines, are a little bit too dark. What I can do is either do the same thing, adjust those colors with a hue saturation options or I can use the eyedropper tool to pick this color, go to this layer, lock it again with a two-finger swipe to the right. That means I can't color outside of any paint pixels that I've haven't already put down. Now I can just color over it. What's nice about that is I maybe I like a little bit of dark, so I'll add a little bit of dimension to it and I just color over the parts that I want. You can just keep playing with that to go with your design. Say this house I feel like it's either too short or too tall. I can put that into new group. All I did was swipe left on all of the layers I want to group together and list them highlighted. I hit this icon right here and it puts it into a new group, which we can rename 'Little House'. Then I can hit ''Transform'' now and see what it looks like what if it was taller and whether it was shorter, squatter look. Maybe I want to bring it out a little more. You can also play with the perspective of this, so I can move it like this. You'd just click and hold corner for you to only adjust that point. There's like this top-down effect, which is interesting, but I don't want to do that, so I can undo each of those manipulations. There's also this really cool adjustment called warp and what that does is work all your layers, which is really cool that you can do this without having to merge all your layers together. You can imagine like maybe I want to bring the house in like this and bring more of trapeze or circles look or I want to see what it might look like if we just try to go really abstract and weird. There's a lot of manipulation involved are available to you, that you can do. I'm going to undo all of that and just push it up. I'm pretty happy with where it is. We can merge these two back down. You can consider that a finished practice piece. Of course we can keep building out at some background, at an intricate design on this roof, but when you're a beginner, I would really suggest keeping it simple and just know that these tools are available for you to play around with things, keep things on different layers. Say you wanted to see what it might look like if this planet was a different color, by having it isolated like that, more saturated, less saturated, you can really play around with it. You can play around with the size or I want it to be a huge planet, red tiny planet. You can start to see that there's a lot of room here to play around with, look and feel of things without having to start all over. I hope that was helpful to see how Procreate can be used to do some really cool adjustments to your paintings.
11. Final Thoughts + Thanks!: We finally made it. So I know that was a ton of information to digest, but hopefully this class is something you can come back to and reference during your learning journey. I would love to see any practice digital paintings you create, so please share them in the class project section. Of course, please feel free to share any thoughts you have on workflow, what you find did and didn't work for you, and any tips you might have discovered along the way, as I'm sure we can certainly learn from each other. Thanks so much for joining this class. If you enjoyed it, please feel free to check out my other scheduled classes through my teacher profile. If you'd like to be notified when I have a new class up, please be sure to follow me. Until then, happy learning. Bye.
Mimi Chao, Owner & Illustrator | Mimochai
