Learn to Paint Digital Watercolors in Adobe Fresco

1. Class Introduction: Do you love the look of watercolor, but need your artwork in a digital format? If you've been converting your traditional watercolor artwork into digital illustrations, learning to use Adobe Fresco's live watercolor brushes could save you time scanning in your artwork to digitize it. Adobe Fresco's live watercolor brushes let you achieve a beautiful watercolor effect using digital brushes. Live brushes will mimic the nature of a real watercolor, and they are always wet paint, so they blend with every new stroke. It can be hard to adjust to a new tool, but in this class, I will give you tips and techniques you can use to build your skills with this digital medium. I'm Amy. I'm a surface pattern designer and illustrator. I have a Bachelor's of Fine Art and over 30 years of experience as an artist. While I learned to paint and draw with traditional mediums, I started creating artwork on the iPad in 2016 and begin using Adobe Fresco when it came out in 2019. This is my fourth Skillshare class where I help students learn to create artwork on the iPad. Whether you're new to watercolor or just new to Adobe Fresco's live watercolor brushes, this class will teach you techniques that you can use to hone your skills and achieve the watercolor look you want. While this class is for beginners and you should be able to jump right in, it may be helpful to know some of the basics of Adobe Fresco. If you need a refresher course on the app, you can check out my intro to iPad art part two, Adobe Fresco class. If you like this class, you can follow me on Skillshare to find out about new classes I'm teaching, and to be notified of any discussions I post. You may even help me decide what I should teach next. You can also find me on Instagram @amyebdesigns. If you're ready to get started, join me in the next lesson. 2. Class Project: We're going to keep things simple with the class project, and create a botanical watercolor illustration. In this class, we will start by discussing the attributes of each of the brushes, then practice some techniques before we move on to our final piece. The final lesson will teach you how to add textures to your artwork. We will focus on learning how to use the brushes, and techniques to achieve a realistic watercolor look at our final project. I have included some images in the Project and Resources tab that you can download, and use in this class. There are some images of the eucalyptus stem that I will be sketching if you want to follow along with the same subject matter, and I've also included a paper texture file to add that finishing touch to your work. You will need to download these files from your browser and save them in a location that you can access from your iPad. For instance, I saved mine in my iCloud Drive. Once you have completed your project, I'd love for you to upload it to the class project page so I can see your finished piece. You can go to the project, and resources section of this class page, and tap Create Project. From there you can upload your image, add a project title and description, and tap Publish. I can't wait to see what you create. In the next lesson, we'll go over some helpful tips to get us started. 3. Helpful Tips to Get Started: The first thing to think about is your document setup. Live watercolor brushes in Adobe Fresco are pixel brushes, so choosing your document size and the PPI is important. PPI stands for pixels per inch, and it's going to determine the resolution of your image. 300 PPI is considered a high-resolution. You can find the PPI under print size, simply tap and type in your resolution. Because I have my units set to pixels, it's going to tell me that it'll print out to roughly nine by almost seven inches. If I were to change my units to inches, it's going to give me an output in pixels. As I adjust my width and my height, you'll see that 10 inches wide by eight inches high at 300 pixels per inch is going to give me an output of 3000 pixels by 2400 pixels. Next up I'm going to name my document, hit "Done", then I'm going to create my document. If you are starting with a traditional watercolor piece, one of your first steps may be to mix up a color palette. In Fresco, you can always start by selecting the set of colors and saving them as a color palette by tapping the color chip, selecting a color and tapping the plus symbol, and adding a set of colors down here. Instead of picking a color palette, I like to keep the color window open and then continue to vary my selections organically. Because with watercolors, it gives more variety in your colors and is similar to using a paint palette with a lot of mixed up paint. All I need to do is simply drag from this gray bar. I can drag it around my canvas, but I actually like to lock it to the side. When this blue bar comes up, simply let go. Now, your color area is opened up and ready to be used permanently. I'm also going to do the same thing with my brushes. I'm going to tap on this second option. I'm going to tap my watercolor and this is my live brushes. I'm going to drag from the gray bar, and you'll see that this top blue bar is open so I'm going to drop it in. Now, I have my brushes and my color panel open up. They will remain open unless I tap the little X and close them down. I like this setup because I can move between my brushes and pick out different colors as I'm painting and just go back and forth. With traditional watercolors, you would typically start with a sketch. You'd sketch out your motif in pencil unless you're painting freehand, and then you would paint over the sketch. Once your work is complete and dry, you would erase out the marks. But, the benefit of digital watercolors is that you can just create your sketch on a separate layer so there's no need to erase later or worry about straight marks being left behind. I have this layer open. I'm going to come up here and I'm going to select just a pencil brush, we got black. Let's say I was going to just sketch up a leafy shape. I can then come in here, add a new layer, and come over it with my watercolors. When I'm finished, I could just simply tap the sketch layer and turn it off. All I'd have left behind was my watercolor. Another interesting thing about working in Fresco is that you can create multimedia work with other brushes, such as ink pens in charcoal pens. If I come up here to my pixel brushes, and let's say I want to select an ink pen, maybe these Belgian comics and I want to choose a little bit darker color, I could come in over this watercolor shape, I need to create a new layer, and I can just draw out right over my work. This works with any brush, including your vector brushes. I could do it on a separate layer, or I can actually draw directly on my watercolor layer. Let's say I wanted to just sketch out right onto that. You'll notice that I now can work in any pixel brush with watercolor brush that I'd like. Another interesting thing about working with the pixel brushes and the watercolor brushes is that if I've put down a pixel brush layer, I come in with my watercolor brush, I will actually paint right over and my pixel brushes will bleed right into my watercolors. If you wanted to start with a pixel brush and draw out something, and then come in and watch over your watercolor, you can actually create your motif that way. It's important to note, as you saw that when I started with a watercolor layer, and then I drew a pixel brush on top of it, there was no bleeding. But once I had the pixel brush down and I came in with my watercolors second, then it blend in together. It only works in one direction. But, it's an interesting thing to note. If you want to work in multimedia, just be careful that if you don't want them to bleed and you want to be able to go back and work on your watercolor again, then you'll want to keep your pixel layer on a separate layer from your watercolor layer. This is just a few things that I wanted you to know before we get started with the rest of the lessons. To recap, setting your document size and resolution is important with Adobe Fresco's pixel based live brushes. You can set your document up so that you always have quick access to your brushes and your color palette as you work. If you want to start with a sketch, you can keep it on a separate layer so there's no need to erase sketch marks when you're done. Live watercolor brushes work with other pixel brushes in Adobe Fresco. You can experiment with multimedia artwork. In the next lesson, we will discuss the five live watercolor brushes, their attributes, and how to make adjustments to the brush settings. 4. Brushes: Let's talk about the five watercolor brush options because each brush has its own unique characteristics, and we're going to go over those in this lesson. We can make adjustments to our brushes using the tool editor. This top option lets you adjust the size of your brush by sliding the slider up and down, or tapping and pressing, and you can type in an exact amount. The second one lets you adjust your flow, which is essentially the amount of paint you have loaded onto your brush. If I take it down really low, it's a very translucent opacity, and if I take it up really high, it's going to be my densest paint. Lastly, we have our water flow. If I take it all the way down to zero, I've basically have dry paint on my brush. But if I take it all the way up to 100, I've got a lot of water loaded onto this brush. Now the interesting thing about Fresco is as I paint with water, it's always going to stay wet. If I were to put this down and come back to it five minutes later, an hour later, it's still going to be wet paint. If I were to come in with a completely dry brush, you'll notice that it doesn't blend at all. But if I come back over an area that already had a lot of water, it is going to be wet because it's just like I'm taking a dry paintbrush and painting over a really wet area on a page. Now, I can control whether or not my area is wet or dry by tapping the layer and then tapping dry layer. Now, my layer is completely dry. If I were to come in with this dry brush, it's not going to blend at all because I have no water on the page or on my brush. But if I take the water flow back up and I come into an area that has been dried but now is wet again, I can re-wet the surface. I have complete control over what area is wet and what area is dry on my page. Clear that layer. First, I want to talk about the basic watercolor brush. I'm going to take my brush size up, and take my water flow down. I'm going to tap, and you'll see that the basic shape is a circle with really clean edges. If I take my water flow up, and I tap, I can control the size by pressing down and it'll increase. You'll see that as it flows in, most of the edges are pretty densely packed, so it'll go right up to the edge, especially the harder you press. If I take the brush down, you can get in some really fine detail work because it's such a controlled brush with a really clean edge. If you want the most control, you can use this basic watercolor brush. Next up we'll talk about the watercolor round detail brush. Again, I'm going to take my water flow down, take my size up. If I were to tap, you'll see that it's also a pretty round brush, but it's very irregular and where the paint flow is the darkest. When I take my water flow all the way up and I tap, you'll see that those areas bleed and blend in together. But there's still this variation in opacity and the paint flow. I can make some interesting effects and I still have a fair amount of control, but it's a little bit more of an organic line. If I take the brush down fairly small, I can still come in with some nice detail, but I'm not going to have quite as clean of an edge. If you're looking for more organic line work as you paint, this one might be a good option for you. The watercolor wash soft brush is a really spongy texture. It's fairly rounded in shape, but it's very irregular in the paint flow. If I take the water flow all the way up, you'll see that it bleeds in, blends in, but there's a dark area and it fades out. The lighter that I press and I build up, the more you can vary the opacity of the paint. You have a lot less control with this brush, but it can create some really nice textures. If you want something with a little bit more surprise where the paint flows to, you might like this brush. It also is important to note that it takes a lot to build up and it builds up very slowly. Next up, we have our watercolor wash flat. This brush is more rectangular in shape, very irregular, spongy, and it has these two darkest points in the corner. You'll notice that when I take the water flow up those areas, they bleed out to the edges. The harder I press, the thicker the paint is going to be. But it's going to go a little bit more to the edge than the watercolor wash soft does. It's not going to build up quite slowly. It's going to give you a bit of a thicker wash. It's still going to have a pretty irregular edge, but it's slightly more controlled than your watercolor wash soft brush has. Lastly, we have our watercolor wet paint splatter. It's just as it sounds, it's just a splatter brush. You can change in the brush setting how much it's scattered apart and how densely packed it is; a lot of control over your paint spatter. If I take the water flow up, you'll notice that it just bleeds in anywhere that the water droplets touch each other. If I drawings, it'll spread out. You can get some interesting textures with this brush if you want to come in. After you're done, you can also wash back over it with a wash, and it'll still give you some texture. The last thing I want to talk about, turn that up a little bit, is coming in with pure water. Let's say I have a painted area and I want to put down more water, but I don't want to put down more paint. I'll use the touch shortcut and I will double-tap and engage the primary position. Now I can come in with just pure water. As I get closer, you'll see that it pulls out the paint. This is just painting pure water even though it doesn't look I'm doing anything. If I come near paint, it'll thin it out and spread that paint out to any area where I've got water flow. Sometimes you don't want to add extra paint to your page, you just want to add some water. This feature is really nice. Now it's important to note that if I tap one more time, I'm in the secondary position, and that's just going to put more paint flow back in. Make sure it's always in the primary position, which is this center one. Simply double-tap and it'll disengage. You can also simply tap and press. If you want to work with one hand and take off and go back and forth, that's also an option for you. One last note about the water flow, is that if you take the water flow down to zero, and you try to engage the pure water feature, it's actually not going to do anything because my water flow determines how much water I have loaded on my brush, and so it also affects painting with pure water. I would need to come in and take the water flow back up. If you ever finding that the pure water feature isn't working for you, you may want to check your water flow. Now, a couple of last tips for getting the most out of your brushes. I like to start with a fairly translucent paint flow. Because if I start all the way up here to a really heavy flow, then I'm going to come in and I'm going to paint, and it's going to get pretty dark pretty quickly, and you lose some of the watercolor look that you're trying to achieve. You might as well be painting with a different brush because it's just so thick. But if I take my paint flow down and I build up more slowly, I can get a little bit more of that translucent variation in the watercolor and you see it a little bit better. I just like to start light and work up my layers, instead of coming in really thick. I find that less is more with your digital brushes. You don't want to overwork the paint. It can be really easy to come in and just keep working. But it's good to know when to stop. The good news is if you find that you've worked a little too much, you simply tap with two fingers, and you'll undo the last stroke that you put down. You can also come up here and tap the "Undo" button up here. No worry that if you've gone a little too far or you've put down a stroke you don't want, simply undo that, and you're good to go. To recap, you now know how to adjust your brush size, the paint flow, and the water flow. You also know how to make additional adjustments to fine-tune any brush to your liking. We discussed each of the five live watercolor brushes and their unique attributes. We also learned how to use the primary touch shortcut to paint with pure water. In the next lesson, we will practice different watercolor techniques with these brushes. 5. Techniques: Now that we're familiar with the brushes, let's talk about some techniques we can use while we paint. First of all, let's create a template to practice on. I'm going to come up here to my pixel brushes and we'll select a pencil. Tap my black color. I'm going to tap my drawing aids. If the ruler comes at first, just simply tap this circle. I'll draw over here. We're just going to outline this circle. Simply drag across. I'm going to create basically three rows of four circles. These do not have to be perfect because they're just for practice. Draw these out. I can continue drawing my circles, but I'm actually going to tap, duplicate the layer, come over to my transform tool, double-tap and it will constrain the movement. I can drop it right down below. Do that one more time. Double-tap, drag it down and now I have three rows of four circles. I simply tap my drawing aids to remove that circle. Merge these down into a single layer and I'll add a new layer. Now we have these templates circles to work in. The first technique I want to talk about is a wet-on-wet technique. I'm going to come back and I'm going to pick, say, a watercolor wash flat. I will pick a color. Let's come in with some white paint and build up the area. Water flows all the way up. I can come in with some pretty wet paint and I can continue to build in those areas. Depending on how hard I press, I can build up my paint pretty slowly, but I'm adding wet paint on top of wet paint. The more I paint, the thicker it's going to be. Depending on the brush that I have selected, it's either going to be really thick paint or it's going to be fairly translucent paint. But I'm going to just try to fill in as close to the edge as possible. That's wet-on-wet with paint on my brush. Let's say I want to come in first with pure water. I'm going to paint in the area. Right Right it doesn't look like I'm doing anything, but I do have a lot of water loaded on my brush. I'm going to just paint in a wet area. Then let's say I want to come in with another brush and I'm going to take the paint flow all the way down, excuse me, the water flow, and I'm going to paint with a dry brush. I can just bloom out. The more paint I add, it'll only go to the areas that already have water added to the canvas. You'll notice that over here, I don't have any water. I didn't put any water down, so it's just dry paint. I could come in with some additional water. I need to take that water flow back up and add in more water. But if I didn't already put it down, it wouldn't have painted in. Depending on whether or not you need to add a lot of water and lighten that area up, which brush you choose and how much paint you have loaded onto your brush, you can just keep building up the paint or the water and keep it really wet look. Next let's talk about working with wet and dry combinations. Let's say that we want to come in with this brush and have completely dry paint. I'm just going to build up, tap in some dry paint and work in that area. Then I'll come in, take my water flow up and I'll just work in some water to those dry areas. Anywhere that I have added the water, it's going to pull that paint out. I can really thin out that original painted area by adding more and more water. Let's try working with a different brush. Take that off. Let's say I come in with this dry paint with my watercolor wash flat and I have a really thick area of paint here. Let's say I come in with my basic water color and I'm going to come in with really high water flow. I'm going to come in with just pure water. Let's say that I paint along the edges. Notice that because I'm not touching the paint, I'm not moving any of the paint around. But the minute I tap into that paint, I can control the area where the water and the paint flow together. The minute I touch in, it'll just pull more paint on. Actually, as I continue to add more water, it'll pull that paint around. Notice, I'm dragging over here and it's pulling that paint into it. I can also control which areas are left white. If you're someone who likes to paint with strategic white areas, just be sure not to bleed or blend in with that water. You can also tap and basically push out those areas a little deeper. Now, one of the harder techniques to simulate with digital brushes is color blooming. With traditional color blooming, you would put down an area of paint then come back in with a lot of just pure water, load that area up, and then use a dry brush or a paper towel and pull the water back out and it bleeds and blends and creates these weird blooming textures with these sharper jagged edges. It's a little harder to do with digital because they tend to want to be a softer edge, but also because once you put water down, you can drive a layer, but you can't pull it back up. One way that we can simulate somewhat the color blooming is by using an eraser. If I were to come in and paint an area. Let's see. Is my water flow turned up? Let's say I painted an area and I want to pull some water back out. I could come in with my eraser brushes and I could erase out a certain area. Now, I recommend sticking to the last three, the soft round opacity, the soft round variable, or the sponge. Something like the hard round variable, that's too big, I come in, take that down a little bit, you'll see that it's just got a really hard line which doesn't blend well with the look of the watercolor. But if I take something like the soft round opacity, it builds up nice and slowly and it doesn't give me a really hard edge. The more I paint in and the harder I press, the more it erases, but I can really control the softness of this look. The sponge one, take that one down a little bit too, gives it a blotchy effect. The soft round variable is similar, but as I press, it gets bigger. With pin pressure is the size of your brush. Now, I could erase an area out and then I could come back in with either pure water or with additional paint and paint some of those areas back in, but I can get some interesting textures depending on which eraser I use and how much water I come and put back in. It's not quite color blooming, but it does add some texture to your paint. Another option that I have is to come in, let's take this down a little bit, water flow up, and let's paint in an area. Say I have some paint. If I come in with my watercolor wet splatter , and take this, make it dry paint, I'm going to dry the layer and I'm going to come in with slightly darker color. Let's say I splattered in some paint. Now, I just dried the layer and I've got dry paint so it's not blending or bleeding at all. But then I can come in with my watercolor wash soft again, keep the water flow turned way up, put in some pure water, and I can bleed in those areas. You'll notice that it leaves a splotchy texture to the paint. I can continue to layer in like that if I wanted to. Drag the layer, come in with some more wet paint splatter, come back in with my water, and add in even more texture. While not exactly the color blooming effect, it does add some interesting textures to your paint. One thing that I love about traditional watercolor is the crisp edge that you get when you paint with a lot of water after you've come in with paint in an area and you add a lot of water, it'll push it out and it just creates this fine edge once it dries. Since the digital paint tends to want to soften you can achieve this effect by washing in color, and then coming in with a finer detail brush. Let me use some paint. Let's say I want to come in with my round detail brush. Take that down fairly small, paint in a darker areas so you can see this. I can either come in with a lot of water; a little water or dry, and I'm just going to paint right at the edges. I have a lot of water already loaded onto this brush, but you'll notice that as I paint I'm going to come back in with pure water and pull out some of that area. I can create that nice crisp edge by just pulling a little bit out, then I can come back in with my detail and paint some more water color in there. As it dries it'll give you a little bit of a crisper edge because this area is going to be a little bit darker. If I take my paint flow all the way down, I'll get an even crisper edge because while it's going to bleed into the wet paint that I've already put in there. It's dry paint so it's not adding additional moisture to it. You can play around with adding that darker crisp texture to the edge. Similarly, you can paint a wash of color. Make sure my water flows all the way up, and I can dry the layer. I can come in with that detail along the edge, and then I take the water flow up pain paint with some pure water and bleed it in. I can also come in and just paint over the dry layer with some paint, and you'll notice that it crisps up the edge because I'm painting right over a dry layer. It also creates a little bit of an edge within that paint. Another option that I have is to paint and then drive the layer before it has a chance to fully bloom out. If I come in with my watercolor; let's take it in really high, let's say I want to bleed it out and I dry the layer before it has a chance to fully bloom out I can create some interesting effects. Before it finishes bleeding naturally, I can stop it in its tracks. When it comes to blending colors, I like to go back to my color palette regularly and create slight variations in the color to keep it interesting. Let's come over here and we're going to paint in a wash of color, and then I'm going to come back in with my color wheel and I'm going to bleed in some new color and I can just keep selecting and painting in. Because I have my color wheel open, I can just continue to add in different colors. This is similar to if you had an open paint palette and you were to go back in. Even if you were selecting from the green if you have a lot of paint on that palette, you're probably picking up additional colors anyway. This gives you that natural look of not having the exact same color each time you paint when you go back to your palette. I like to keep a variation in my colors to make it look a little bit more realistic. When it comes to adding in darker areas of paint; so let's say I want to come in here and paint in an area. I can just darken that color. The more black I add the duller it's going to get, but that's one option. The other option is to keep it a little more saturated and choose its complimentary color, so the opposite side of the color wheel. When I add in a bit of color there it'll still darken the area, but it will keep it a little bit brighter and more interesting. You can pick which way that you want to add in darker areas, but those are the two options. When it comes to adding color, you can also work on the same layer or choose a different layer. If I were to come in with this color and then I added in a new layer, and let's say I picked another color to blend with it, it's going to bleed on its own layer and it's going to overlap because they're pretty translucent but it's not actually bleeding with the two colors. Once I come back in, I can merge it down. If I were to add pure water is actually going to bleed together. Again using different layers is more about having control about what areas bleed together and what don't. The last thing I wanted to discuss is how to change your colors with the fill bucket. Let's say that we painted an area and in the end it wasn't really the right shade and we wanted to change that color. Well, we can come over to the fill bucket and you'll notice that the tool editor changes. The options for the tool bucket are color margin which is the first one, and we want to take our color margin all the way up to 255. This is going to make sure that the entire area that we have colored in is going to change. If our color margin is down too low, it's only going to fill the color that matches exactly. Because our watercolors have variations in that tone because of the opacity level, then it won't change the entire thing. Our color margin needs to be all the way up and then we want to change our field settings, make sure that the preserve transparency is on. This little area will be dark. If we tap, that's off. Tap again, this is on. So make sure that we want to change that to preserve transparency because otherwise when we fill it with a fill bucket if it's off, it'll just be a solid dense color. If we leave Preserve Transparency on, it will keep all of the translucent qualities of the watercolor. I'm going to pick a different color and once I've got that picked, I can tap. I have recolored my watercolor area with that blue. I can continue to recolor it to any color as many times as I like. It's important to note that if you were to have variations in the colors on your page; so let's say we've got some blue in here, if I come in with the recolor artwork tool with the fill bucket it's going to all change the whole thing to one color. The fill bucket doesn't work if you have a lot of colors blended in with your watercolor. It only works if you have a solid color, so something like a background wash if it's one solid color. Or if you've worked on different layers and you want to just recolor one of them, then the fill bucket tool will work. You can see that we can achieve different looks by applying these different techniques. Feel free to pause and practice the techniques to get comfortable with the different ways to apply your paint. You can also upload your practice marks to the project page to show off your techniques. To recap, we learned various watercolor techniques to achieve different looks with our digital brushes. We learned how to use multiple layers to our advantage and how to add in finer details. We also learned how to use the fill bucket to recolor our artwork. Next up I'll show you how to use layer masks to create clean edges and a more controlled finish. 6. Layer Masks: One last thing I want to discuss before we put all these techniques to work in our final piece is how to use layer masks to help you achieve a more controlled and clean final piece. Now, I could just start painting with my round detail. Let's say I wanted to start painting out a leafy little branch here. Because I've got my round detail brush and it's fairly small, I can't keep a bit of control over my shapes. I could have also started with a sketch layer to work from. But every time I put paint down, I can redefine the shape a little bit. If I want to keep any white areas, I need to be careful not to paint over the area at all that I've left behind. I could just keep working up some colors in here. There'll be contained somewhat to the area I've already put wet paint down, and I just have to be a little careful about how I move the paint around. That is one way to get started. If you want to keep the shape more defined, you could first draw your motif with a pixel brush and then use a layer mask to contain the paint to that shape. Now this can be helpful if you prefer to keep a lot of whitespace in your work that's well-defined. Think of it a bit like using masking fluid in a traditional watercolor artwork. I'm going to add a new layer, I'm going to come in, select a pixel brush. I like the ink brushes, I think they work really nicely with this, I'll keep this Belgian Comics. I would start with a fairly light color, and then I could just start painting that same leafy shape. Now if you're getting started and you're having trouble painting with the Apple Pencil on glass, you could also adjust the smoothing and it can assist the look of your line and have a little less of that jitter. Sometimes the pen on glass feel is a little odd if you're using it for the first few times or due to don't have that resistance you get with real paper. Once I've drawn up my motif, I'm going to tap the layer and mask layer contents. Now I can see that my layer mask is created. Anything that is in black on my layer mask is going to be hidden by the mask and anything that is in white is going to be revealed. You'll notice that my leafy shape is, you can just barely see that it is in white here, so it is being revealed by my mask. I'm going to swipe to the right and I have access to my layer again. Any paint that I put down will now be contained to this shape. If I came in with, say, darker, bluish color, and I picked my watercolor brush, let's say I want to pick a wash, I can start painting. It doesn't matter where I put the paint down, it won't paint outside of the shape. Come in with a lighter color. The reason that I chose to start with a fairly light color is because this paint is pretty opaque, and if I start with a really dark color, it's very hard to paint over with the watercolor and get a nice translucent effect. Come in and add in some dark tones, some shadows. I can use all the techniques that we just learned in this last lesson to build up some color with my watercolors. You'll notice that the shape is just a little bit more defined. I can also use the eraser to remove all the color that I originally put down and start from scratch. Let's start a new layer. We're going to take our pen again, and this time I could start with black because I'm going to be erasing it out anyway. Let's just do that same shape. Again, I'm going to leave some stray white areas just to keep it interesting. If you want to fill it in completely, that works too. Once I've got my shape drawn, I recommend duplicating the layer. I'm going to turn that duplicated layer off for a second and I'm going to take my original layer, come up to my layer properties, and I'm going to take the opacity down to a five. You'll see that it's just faintly there. Because when I turn this layer back on, I'm going to erase out my shape so that I can start with a blank page, but still have my layer contained by a mask. When I tap mask layer contents, swipe across, I'm going to erase out the shape, and when I do that because I've kept my original layer at a really light opacity, I now see it as a guide, as I'm painting. I've got the mask layer selected, I'm going to come in with my watercolor, and I'm going to pick color to get started, and I can just start painting. But unlike the last method, I'm starting with really translucent color because I'm starting from a complete blank page. If I turn off that hidden layer, you'll see that my mask is only showing up where I just put watercolor down here I was starting with a really thick, opaque original color, and here I'm starting from nothing. It just depends on the final look you want. As I build up color on this layer, that's the wrong layer I want to paint on this one, it will build up and stay a little bit lighter. I think it looks a little bit more like the watercolor look we're going for. I really like this method a lot. We can just keep adding in some color, we can add in some darks. I have this blend of loose painting and yet still quite a bit of control the brush. I'm going to turn this layer off completely, and you can just see the slight differences. These two have a really controlled shape, but I have a little bit more control over the color because I started with something that was just a blank page here. I have that base layer of color, so it's going to be a little thicker. You can pick whichever strategy you prefer. Now, when you're happy with the results, you can flatten the mask. You can say I want to flatten this mask. If I want a little less perfect edge, I could come over with my watercolor round, fine detail and water only and I could actually loosen up this edge by painting it with pure water just along the side. I could start with something with a little more control, and then make it a little less perfect, if you will. There's just so much control that you have using this technique, and I really like working with it. To recap, we learned how to mimic the use of masking fluid by utilizing a layer mask. This let us maintain clean controlled shapes while we paint. We learned how to paint over the masked layer or erase the original shape and start with a clean page. To make our work a little imperfect, we also learned how to flatten the mask and use pure water along the edges at the end. Next step, we will get started on our final piece and incorporate everything we've learned in this class. 7. The Final Piece: For today's final piece, I'm going to be creating a botanical print. I've included some images in the resource tab that you can download and use if you want to follow along with the same motif. I love botanical motifs because you don't really have to worry about perfection, no two leaves look exactly the same. You are welcome to use your own subject matter if you have something in particular, you'd like to paint, whether that's an image you have saved or something right in front of you. I have this eucalyptus leaves that I'm going to be working from. I also have an image of it in the resources tab if you want to use the same subject matter. I'm just going to put it off to the side here and I'm going to be using it to draw from. Now, one thing that I want to do before we get started is change the orientation of my document to be portrait, because the shape of my eucalyptus stem is going to work better in portrait mode. I simply rotate that and now I'm ready to go. On this new layer, I'm going to come up top my Pixel brushes, come in, and use my sketching pencil. I like to start with a black pencil. Now, you don't have to be perfect here. This is just our sketch layer. This is just getting down the basic shapes of our leaves. I love starting with a sketch because I worry a little bit less when I'm working on my final piece because I've already sketched out and worked through any areas I might want to redefine. Once I'm done sketching, let's say that I like the overall sketch that I made, but I don't like its position. I can come over to the transform tool and I could rotate it a little bit. I can use these little guides and this will tell me when I've locked it into the center. Maybe I want to center the piece a little bit or maybe I want it to be a little off-centered. Once I have it where I want it, I can tap Done, and now we're ready to go. Lastly, I'm going to come up to my Layer Properties panel and I'm going to take the opacity down because it just want my sketch layer to be really faint in the background as a guide for me to work over. I'm going to add in a new layer. At this point, we need to choose whether you are going to freehand your brushstrokes or use a layer mask to contain the watercolor. I'm going to be using layer masks method today for this piece, but you can experiment and find which method suits your style best. I'm going to come up here to my Pixel brushes and go to my Ink pens. I really like the fountain pen for this. It has a nice wet line to it, which works well with the watercolor. I am going to be using the layer mask and then erase today. I'm going to be starting in black. If you were going to be using the first layer mask method, I would recommend starting with a much lighter color because the darker and denser your color is to start with, the harder it will be to build up those watercolors. Now, I'm going to fill in using my brush instead of the fill bucket, because I find that with the pixel brushes when you use the fill bucket, it leaves a little bit of line between your original outline and the fill area, which I don't really like. Even though this takes a little bit more time, I have a little bit more control and I can make sure it's filled in appropriately. I've drawn in all my leaves. One last thing I want to do is actually erase out the stem because I want there to be no paint there, I want it to be a little more defined. I could use one of my eraser brushes, but I can also turn my ink pen into a eraser brush if I double-tap the primary touch shortcut. I'm going to come in, and lightly erase out with this fountain pen an area for that stem. With a little bit of light pressure, I can just lightly come in. I can also make it even more defined. I just want a really light area to be erased out. Once I have it the way I want it, I'm going to duplicate the layer, go to my original layer, take the opacity down to about five or six, I'm going to turn off my sketch layer and I'm going to mask this new layer, swipe across and now I'm going to come in and erase out all this black color. I've got my guide layer here, that's really light. I've turned off my sketch layer, and now I've got my mask layer ready to go. I'll come in, I'll select maybe my wash. I'll pick a nice color. Then I can start coming in with my wash and just building up some light color. Remember, the watercolor wash soft brush is very faint, so it takes a lot to build it up. Giving it an overall wash. I want to come in with a bit more dark blue. I wash some of that in. Now, if I turn off my guide layer, I can see a little bit better where I'm actually working on this watercolor area. At some point I can keep the guide off or I can leave it on if I want to see what it looks like. It does dull it down as you can see. Once you've got a pretty decent amount of linework showing through, you maybe don't need that guide layer anymore. Let's come up with some brighter tones and maybe the watercolor round detail brush. Op, I'm going to turn back my layer, it's on the wrong layer and buildup some denser color. Because I put that wash down, there's a lot of water on the canvas and it's really bleeding in really nicely. Now that I have a lot of variation in my color, I just find it really interesting. But you could work with the same general green tone and just build it up really lightly over several layers so that you get a little bit more variation in tone, but you keep it to the same general, say, green shape. Let's say I wanted to come in here with some darker areas. I can come in and keep my layer wet, brush that in, and I can use the water to really push it around and have it just in the areas that I wanted. I could also come in and dry my layer. Now, when I come in with my darker color, little more control over where it goes. Because my layer has been dried and I don't have all that wet area for it to pull into. I can decide where I want to pull it out from. I could also come in with some splatter paint for some good texture. I could dry the layer, and then come in with maybe some bluish splatter, get a little texture. Maybe I want to come back in with my watercolor wash, just some water, and bleed those sparkly areas out a little bit. If I wanted to keep my texture layer of splatter, I could have duplicated the layer, created a new mask, and it would still be contained within the same shape, but it would be on its own layer, so you could continue to work on this main layer but keep the splatter intact, or you could just wait until the very end and add that splatter texture in when it's all finished. Also, come back in and now my area is wet, so it's going to bleed in immediately. But it still leaves a bit of texture on my brush. I'm going to blend a few more areas in. Once I have my piece the way I want it, I'm done. Now, the last thing I want to show you is the use of blend modes to change the effect of your work. I'm going to turn on my guide, duplicate it, and then I'm going to come up here, and I'm going to turn it back up to full opacity. Because it is a black layer, then it darkens the watercolor up a bit. But I could play around with filling it with any other shade. I can take a more greenish-blue and fill the shape in. Now the underlying shape is a lot lighter. I could come in with a more yellowy tone. Again, I'm filling in this original layer with a different shade and it's just basically coming through because the watercolor layer has a little bit of opacity, so you can see that layer coming through. But on top of that, I could take my watercolor layer, come up to the Layer Properties panel and change the blend mode. This is going to change how my watercolor layer interacts with the layer below it. You can just turn these on and off, and because they're not permanent, they're a non-destructive way to just have some fun and see if any of these blend modes add an effect that you like, so maybe we like darker color. Now, we can play around with the interaction between these two layers. We can also add in a background wash if we want to, so I'm adding a new layer. I'm going to come up to my watercolor wash soft, take the opacity down, so I can build this up. I'm going to make sure my waterflow is really high. I'm just going to come in and wash in some color. Come in with some water. Let's say that once we had our watercolor wash put in, we don't really like the color tone with our piece. It's on its own layer and it's one solid color, so this would be a good time to use the fill bucket to re-color our work. Let's just say I want to come in, and I want more of a blue tone and a little bit lighter. I could come in with my fill bucket, I have my color margin turned all the way up and my preserve transparency turned on, and if I tap that layer, now it changes to blue. That's a good use of recoloring it with the fill bucket rather than coming in on the watercolor layer that I already have. Because it has some many variations in tone, and I don't want to come in and recolor with one solid color and take away all that nice effect that I've built-in. Now that we're done, I want to show you one last finishing touch to add that realistic watercolor finish. In the next lesson, we will add in some paper texture to our piece. 8. Adding Paper Textures: The one thing that's missing with a live watercolor brushes in Adobe Fresco is the texture of paper. It's that final detail that gives it a more traditional look of watercolor. To achieve the look, we're going to need to import an image of watercolor paper, and use a clipping mask to add that paper texture into our artwork. Now, I've included a paper texture file in the resources tab of this class that you are free to download. But you could also create your own. Let's add it into our document using the place menu. I'm going to Place, and I've saved it in my files and wherever you have it saved, just browse and find it and then tap the file and it'll insert it into your document. Now, I need to extend this out just a little bit so it fits the full size of my document. The first thing you'll notice is that it is in the background behind my watercolor texture. Now, if I want to add the texture of paper to my overall document in the background, I could leave it here, I could clip it to the background, I may want to take the opacity down just a little bit because it's dark, and leave it like that. Now I have a light texture of paper in my background. I also want to add it to the texture of my leaves. I'm going to duplicate that layer. I'm going to drag it above the layer where my watercolor is, and right now you can see I have it at about 30 percent opacity, but if I turn it all the way up, it's going to block out my shape. What I want to do is create a clipping mask. I'm going to use this little icon here, and it's going to clip the texture of the paper to my watercolor layer, but you'll notice that it erases it out. What I want to do is come into my blend modes and select multiply, and now I've added the texture to my leaves, but I have it coming through because it's multiplying the layer underneath. Now, you'll notice that it does darken it up a little bit. I can do a couple of things. I could take the opacity down and it'll lighten it, but then you loose a little bit of the paper texture. Another option would be to bring the opacity all the way up and duplicate the layer, and this time we'll choose a different blend mode. Lighten screen, let's try luminosity blend mode. This time I want to take the opacity down quite a bit because I just want to lighten it with the luminosity blend mode , just as touch. Now, I have that second blend mode layered over. If I turn it off, you'll see it becomes darker. If I turn both off, you'll see my original layer again. This way I can add in some texture and also keep it lighter and retain some of the qualities of my original watercolor layer. This is just an optional finishing touch, it's definitely not necessary, but I like adding a little texture of the paper. It just brings that last finishing touch to it. You could also use this same technique of clipping masks and blend modes to add other textures into your artwork. Now that we know how to use them, you can experiment as much as you want. You have plenty of options to choose from when you're working with watercolors and Adobe Fresco. Now that we've created our artwork, we're ready to export it. Now if I come up to the Share menu and I tap "Publish and export", tap "Export as" you'll see that I have four options. The first two PNG and JPEG are going to take every layer that I have turned on and flattened it into a single image to be exported as you need to use it. If you just want to print out the entire image as a print, you could export it as a JPEG. If you choose one of the bottom options you have the PSD and the PDF. Now the PSD and the PDF are going to Export Layers. It's important to note that anything that you work on in Adobe Fresco, the files are automatically synced to your Creative Cloud account. There's no need to export your work if you intend to use it in Adobe Photoshop. It'll actually just be there when you open up Photoshop the next time. Let's say that I just want to export this eucalyptus stem and not the background. I'm going to come in, hit Done, and I'm going to turn off any layer that I don't need, including the background layer. Now all I have left is the shape of my leaf. I can come up, hit "Share", "Publish and Export", "Export As", and select PNG. If I save this to my files, I now have a file with just the eucalyptus leaves that can be used in other things. Let's say I want to pull in just this motif to use in a card on creating or another artwork or maybe a surface pattern, then I can pull in this shape and just have the leaf shape. I already have the background removed. If you're someone who has been working with traditional watercolors then importing them into your Photoshop files and then erasing out the background and tweaking little mistakes, you don't have to worry about that when you work in digital watercolors because you already have your background on separate layers that you can just turn off and then export as a PNG. One last thing I would note is that under the Share menu to do have this Send to Illustrator, and you have the option to send it to your iPad Illustrator or to the desktop. But keep in mind that Illustrator is a vector art program and your live watercolors are pixel-based. If you want to use it in Illustrator, you would then have to convert your work into vectors. But now that you know how to export your work, you can use it in any way that suits your needs. Next up, we're going to wrap up the class with some final thoughts. 9. Final Thoughts: In this class, you'll learn several techniques to create beautiful watercolor illustrations. If you plan to use your artwork digitally, this will save you so much time and energy from scanning in your artwork and digitizing it. If you're happy with your final piece, I would love for you to upload it to the class project page so I can see how it turned out. If you'd like to hear about any new classes I'll be teaching, be sure to follow me on Skillshare. If you enjoyed this class, please consider leaving a review. This will help other students find my class, and will also help me improve my skills as a teacher. You can also check out my other classes to learn more about creating artwork on the iPad. Thank you so much for watching, it has been an honor to teach you.