Transcripts
1. Introduction: I think that Illustration can be a really great tool to tell your own story and also just to interpret your feelings or thoughts visually in a way that you can't do with a book or other types of art. Illustration is very unique and that it can reflect many people's experiences. Hi, I'm Sophia Yeshi. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator based in Brooklyn, New York. I create work that's usually really bright, colorful golds. I use a lot of patterns in my work, typically feature women or people of color. In today's class, we will be using Illustrator for iPad and creating an illustration based off of a feeling or quote. We're going to go through how to sketch out an idea. We're going to go through exactly how to use Illustrator for iPad and my favorite tips and tricks like Adobe fonts, type on a path, how to make your own patterns in iPad, as well as, how to add some textures. I would really encourage you to work alongside with me as I go. If you want to follow along with Illustrator for iPad, definitely have your iPad ready, but if not, you could also use Illustrator on the desktop or even just a pencil and paper if you want to draw as I'm drawing. My biggest thing that I hope that you take away is just the idea that there's no right or wrong way to express yourself. I just want you to have fun with it whether you're going to apply these tools to Illustrator for iPad or you're just going to use this to interpret your own feelings into an illustration. Just so you know, this class was recorded live and I got to interact with the audience as I was drawing. Okay, let's get into it.
2. Illustration as Communication: Thank you, everyone for being here. My name's Obreanna. I, you, she, her, hers pronouns. I am a content producer on the team at Skillshare. We're super excited today for this live class with Sophia Yeshi. Sofia, hi. Thanks for being here. Hi. Tell us, what are we doing today and why did you pick this type of project? Keeping on theme with my Skillshare class, we are also going to be focusing on text than a quote but actually illustrating that. So it'll be less about how to design the text itself and more about how to visualize that into an illustration. The reason why I chose this type of project is because a lot of my work does start from an idea or a thought, whether it's coming from feelings of imposter syndrome, or feelings of not being productive enough, or vulnerability, or whatever it is. We'll go through that emotion and then I'll think like this is something someone else can relate to. That usually end up turning that into an illustration. I figure this is another way to visualize your thoughts rather than just seeing in text format. I love that. I relate to all of those things. Why do you think illustration is so powerful in getting maybe heard or ideas people don't really talk about super openly? Why do you think it's such a powerful way to get important messages out there? I think that illustration allows you to visually interpret not just feelings, just anything the way that you are thinking. Just seeing something like this obviously difference between reading a description in a book and seeing it because I think it's a lot easier to relate to it and people can see themselves reflected in it. I think that's my favorite part about illustration is that you can connect so well with other people who have similar experiences as you. I really enjoy that aspect of it. Yeah, for sure. For those following along, what can they expect to come out of this class with? At the very least, you'll see my process of how I turn idea into an illustration, starting from a sketch which I'll share, showing how I do design in iPad. Then you'll also see the process in Illustrator for iPad and hopefully see some cool new tricks or at least just like the features. If you want to follow along in Illustrator for iPad, obviously, have your iPad open, have Illustrator downloaded, go ahead and sign in with your Creative Cloud Login or if you want to follow on on the desktop. IPad has the same features, except for the pattern tools, that's the only thing that you won't be able to follow along specifically. Or if you just want to use a paper and pencil, and just sketch, and think about the ideas, and how those would translate to other mediums, that's fine too.
3. Planning Your Illustration: To get started, let's talk about choosing your message and sketching your design. I'm going to go ahead and make a new artboard, click custom size. Typically, I think something like this, I will square format will work well. I usually just size it for Instagram because it's really great, you can resize it for other formats later. I'm just going to go ahead and do 1080 by 1080, keep it in pixels, RGB is fine in one artboard. I went ahead and created a sketch before we got here, just so I can show you all my process. I'm going to go ahead and import that sketch. The quote that I chose today is, "You deserve to be here." There's a couple of reasons why I chose this quote. One is because I think, like I said, I talk a lot about imposter syndrome and oftentimes, you can feel like you don't deserve to be in the spaces that you're in or when you do reach success, that you aren't qualified to be at that level. That's something that I have been thinking about a lot. That just came to me. Then, the other meaning of this is literally just; you deserve to be here in life and be alive and to exist, and there's not much more required of you at end of the day. I thought that this quote, I could relate to and I thought that other people would like it as well. Then, as far as the sketch, I just wanted something that was pretty direct. A lot of times when it comes to illustration, I think keeping it simple is my favorite way to do it. I usually go for, what can I visualize in my head? I was thinking of like, a woman just looking at the camera and just like, "Yeah, I'm here." As you're creating something like this, how do you think about the layout or the balance of illustration and text? Obviously, we're focusing on illustration today, which is why it's a prominent piece, but do you have sort go to options or do you just sketch different ideas to land there? Yeah. A lot of the times, and I showed this in my class too, I like to look at references. Sometimes I'll see other illustrations or even my own illustrations, where they had text at the top or texts at the bottom or they weaved it into the illustration. A lot of times I'll take that and say, "Okay.' I think for a quote like this, "You deserve to be here," I wanted to be prominent and I wanted to maybe be the first thing that you see because that quote is important to it. I decided to put it at the top. I could have put it at the bottom, I could have found a way to incorporate the illustration with the texts like maybe she was holding a sign, but I thought for something like this, that having it at the top would be more impactful.
4. Drawing Your Outline: Now, I'm going to create my outline and illustrator on the iPad and show you some useful tools in the program. To get started, I went ahead and placed, I don't know if you guys saw, but I use this little picture icon you can import from your files, your photos anywhere. I just place that on the iPod and I locked it so that it wouldn't ground. I'm going to go ahead and make another layer. I do have this already like outlined just in case I run out of time, but I'll start to show you all how I would illustrate this, so you can see some of the different tools. Starting off, I would most likely use either the pen tool or the pencil tool. I'll start with the pen tool and just go ahead and start making some points. I'm going to change this to a stroke and I'll just make it red so that it stands out, but I will be changing that later. I'll do a little bit of this and then I'll show you all a couple of different tools. I'm going to go ahead and select the "Direct Selection Tool". I realize I want her shoulders to stand on its own, I just went ahead and cut that path so that way I can make this its own color. The one thing that I really enjoy about iPad that I don't use as often on desktop, a lot of times when I do want to draw with the pencil tool, I'll show you what that looks like. It can be very free hand and it can be very messy. You often end up with more points than you would want to. One way that you can really clean up really fast if you click this little simplified tool, it'll get rid of any unnecessary points, but it still keeps your drawing and try to make sure that it looks exactly how it's supposed to or how you intended it to. Cool. These two right here to interconnect so I can go over here and join those paths. Yeah, you can start to see how I would draw with the pen tool and also the pencil tool. I'm going to show you all a few more things. One of my other favorite tools with Illustrator is the blob brush and honestly, I've never used this on desktop. But I find myself using it all the time. One because they don't have like a regular brush option. You just have the pencil and the blob brush. But I actually really like it, you have a few different options of brush tips, and most of the time use the basic round and I like to use it pretty small. Maybe size one or even two in illustrate two. You can change the smooth and is so that way when you draw a line, you don't get way too many paths and it's not too crooked. You can also change the pressure dynamics. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. It's really nice. You can go ahead if you change the presser dynamics a lot, depending on how hard or soft you press on your Apple pencil, that'll determine the width of the line. This is probably like a newbie question, but when would you use the blob versus the pen? Versus the pen? Yeah. Or what was the first one? The pencil. Yeah, the pencil. I can show you the difference. With the blob brush, if I go ahead and I draw over this shape and I fill this in, this is actually one solid shape. If I were to use the pencil tool, I would have to go around the edges instead of filling it in and you're not going to get any of those brush tips. You're not going to get the chisel or anything like that with the pencil tool. It just really depends on your preference, but I think I tend to use this mostly for drawing facial features, details on clothing or hair, I usually use the blob brush and I want to go back to the basic round one. Yeah, you can see. Even for eyebrows. I'm just going to go ahead and feel that in. It's a little thick, I don't know. That's the thing now. Big brows are in. Sarah is wondering, is there a reason why you chose to start with the pen or pencil tool versus the blob brush; is there a reason to the order you go or is it just which piece of the illustration are you're tackling and what makes sense there? Yeah. I tend to usually do the bigger shapes first and I do those with the pen or the pencil tool. I use the blob brush for finer details because if I was using the blob brush for the shirt and everything, I just wanted to be able to switch the stroke on and off and have it be really fun and out of the way as I'm creating the entire illustration. Then later, I'll go in in that color. Yeah, that was why I started with the pen and pencil tools. Cool. Someone said, how did you get the two women to be so symmetrical? Well, it's a sketch. I drew one first and then I actually did this sketch in Adobe Fresco. I just duplicated it and flipped it so that I could show you all the mirror repeat tool in here, which is going to be really fun. That's awesome. Yeah, I think drawing it in reverse. I'm sure you could get close, but that would be hard. Yeah. It wouldn't be perfect. I'm not that good. Let's move on to the next piece. Perfect. Let me just show you all what it looks like with all of the outlines. Nice. Cool. You can see I started with a combination of the pen tool, the pencil tool and then I'll show you why I use the blob brush. The blob brush is like the eyes like I did on the other one, the eyebrows, these details on the pants. Then I'm going to, let me see if I can release this. Actually, I don't have to because I'll show you how to do it. Okay. I have all the outlines here and I was able to create a really easy mirror repeat. What you do, I'm trying to see if I can release it. Let me see, I can show you how I did it. I think if I expanded and then ungroup it. Yeah. Here we go. I have this all outlines. I'm going to go ahead and go to repeat mirror and it'll create a mirror over here. I don't want to rotate it, I just want to move it so it's on this side. Then, I'll align it in the center and I think I'll just make it a little bit bigger. I have my sketch on the bottom here, I can easily refer back to it and you can see that that matches up pretty well. Wow. How often do you find yourself getting into, actually working from the sketch, drawing it here in Illustrator? Do you often change from your initial design or is it normally the sketches pretty true to where you end up? Yeah. I think that I do tend to follow my sketches pretty well, but obviously, my sketches are very rough. I'm really just getting a loose idea and then once I get into Illustrator, that's when I really refining it. Maybe the proportions weren't 100 percent right. I'm not sticking to it exactly. Yeah. You're letting yourself have some freedom. Exactly.
5. Choosing Color: Next, we're going to get into adding the color. I have a bunch of different color palettes saved to my swatches and my libraries. I was really glad that they are imported because that's what I use for everything. I have this Yeshi Designs Branding and then these are a lot of colors that I just like to use in my illustrations. I'm going to grab maybe, let's say, we use this pink for her shirt and I'm going to end up making this a pattern. Then I'm going to make this a little bit lighter so I can see the arm. We can choose some colors in here. I just want something that's going to work together and complement one another, just a nice theme that I feel like will work well. I think I may stick with an accurate skin tone for this tone. Sometimes I do crazy skinny tones, but I'll stick to just brown skin. I'm going add that to my color palettes. I mean, lime green is fantastic. I feel like I love all the color palettes that you have saved. It so hard for me to actually figure out which colors go together. Do you collect references or see cool color combinations and file those away in your brain? Yes, I do. I have an entire board on Pinterest called color inspiration. Then I also just look at color inspiration all the time. That's something that I'm constantly searching for. I don't just stick to those colors that I showed you. I'll often start there, but I definitely deviate. I can even show you some of the other libraries that I have. I have some from the Skillshare, one that I did just a couple of different palettes. I have some from different projects. Scary color themes. Yeah, it was for this job interview but you maybe make something for it and I'll show you. It was just some, look, like red and green. But yeah, and then I just have different ones that I'll go through for different projects. That's awesome. I mean, even behind you, you have quite amazing blue and purple outfit, it's a color story. Thanks. I love colors. I like the palette that I use, but I feel like I don't want to limit myself to that, so I'm always looking for other colors. Okay. Then I don't think neon pink eyebrows will work. So I'm gonna go ahead and change that maybe to I think black. I like black facial features. If you see, I edited on one side and it's changing on the other side as well. So why did I choose to make the eye lines pink? Because I was drawing from this sketch and the sketch was black. So I couldn't choose white because that would match the background, so I honestly just chose an arbitrary color. [inaudible]. Probably change it. Absolutely, I was definitely going to change it. I always just pick a random color and then I change it later. So as long as things are in that, I need to learn my lingo, but in that mirrored group or that repeated group, if you change one, the other will change? Yes, and I think that's a really cool feature. Yeah. Okay. What colors should we make her hair? What do we say? Scarlet violet. Okay. I'm wearing a purple sweater, so. Yeah, inspired. What color is violet also? I mean, that looks good. Okay. We'll go there. I'll do some swatches. Although we have a dissenting opinion here from [inaudible] That's pretty cool. Okay. Let's try that. That looks cool. That is good. It looks like '90s, I don't know. The only thing I don't love about this color picker is that it's not always accurate. So in order to get the exact color, I have to add it to my swatches. That's just a tip that if you do swatch it from your artwork itself, it may be slightly off. Her hair and then her hand. You can see this is coming together really quickly, which takes a few things. The other thing that I can do is maybe not hot pink. Add a color to the background just to see what that would look like. I'm going to make another layer, drag it to the bottom, and then I'll put the rectangle in there; if it will move. It didn't go in there though. Don't look at my failure. When it's live, it keeps them more exciting. Exactly. It's relatable. For the background. I think it's nice for now. Most likely, I will change these colors later. The reason why I do it like this is, I give everything an initial color just to see how it works together and then I'll usually end up tweaking it by the ends. I feel this is a great starting point.
6. Adding Text: Now I'm going to get into adding texts in designing this into our final layout. I went to the Text tool and I drew a text box and then I typed in you deserve. I'm going to change the font in a second, but I knew that it had to be two different text boxes because I'm going to do a text on a path for the top, and then for the bottom I just have it to be straight. I'm going to duplicate this, and if you can see right here, you click the text, there's a little duplicate and all you have to do is actually drag it down, which is nice. I duplicated that, and then I'll type to be here. We locked that so that background doesn't move. I'm going to select both of those and I'm going to hide my sketch because it can get a little confusing seeing it. We're going to go ahead and find a nice font. The cool thing about Illustrated for iPad is that all of your Typekit, or sorry, is that called Typekit anymore? All of your Adobe fonts, they automatically download into the software. I'm sorry. I'm just remembering the name from three years ago. But yeah, so they automatically download and you can also upload your own fonts. I added some fonts that I had purchased, that I had a license to, and I added those here. I didn't actually pick a specific typeface for this class because I figured as I go through it, I'll find something that I think works well. Yeah. I like this one, it's like screaming at us a little too much, so I'm going to turn it off. Let me see what else. Finding a font can be just as hard as finding the right color combination. It seems like it speaks so much. Yeah, and I can talk a little bit about how I choose fonts as well. I think that for typography it really depends on what the message is that I'm trying to get across. For something like this, I definitely wanted to stand out to you. I don't want it to shout, but also to make a statement and to say we've definitively guess you deserve to be here, and take that message away from it. I've used these typeface a few times, I might not use it today, but it's called freehouse. I really like how that one looks. It sort nostalgic, vintage vibe to it. I'm going to just scroll down and see what it's calling out to me. That's nice, it's just large, probably make it a little smaller. I also downloaded a few new typefaces from Adobe fonts a couple of days ago. I also have these here. Gastro mondo. I'm going to scroll down, and then if I don't see anybody, then I will do gastro mondo. Such a good font name. I like this. What? That's nice. I tend to like serifs, and I like serifs that it have a softer side or they just look a little different than your average there. Maybe we'll stick with this one and I'm going to make it a little smaller, and then I'm going to change the color. Like I said, I may change it later, but I think for now I'll pick a color that's in my illustration, and then we'll go ahead and do the type on a path. If I remember correctly, the way to do this is you're going to draw a shape. I'll just change that to outline so I can see it. I want to make sure that this is going to be wide enough to cover the top, the cover to be here. What I'm looking at is this arch right here. The rest of the circle doesn't matter just this arch and with the type selected, I believe. Let me see, type on a path. I did it. Magic, truly like magic. Then we just have to go ahead and change the positioning, get that centered. I think it's a little off-centered. Try to zoom out. Yeah. Here, you're just tweaking to find exactly that right balance. Yeah. But I may want to make this a little bit smaller. I just have to play around with the proportions to make sure that it looks visually balanced. Someone said they missed the part where you typed on a path. Could you quickly go over that one more time? Draw a shape. You have your text, Lorem Ipsum. With the text and the shape selected, go to Type on the right, the Type panel, and then click Type on a path. Awesome. That was really easy. Perfect. This background got a little out of place, I'm just going to align that and lock it. I'm not going to play around the text too much because I know there's other things to do, but I would love to continue playing around with it.
7. Creating a Pattern: Next, we're going to get into one of my favorite tools for Illustrator on the iPad to create a really fun pattern on the shirt. For the pattern, I'm going to go ahead and show my sketch again. I will bring it to the top, not always to the top actually. Oh, no, I will. Okay, bring to the top. If you can see, I have this shape pattern that I use in a lot of my work, so I'm going to just start by drawing some of those shapes. I'm okay with them being freehand, it doesn't need to be perfect. It's a pattern on a shirt and so it can feel a little like fun, it could even be a little wonky. I will start by giving each shape a different color. I'm drawing with the Pencil tool here because like I said, it doesn't have to be super perfect and accurate. If that's how you want your work to look, I would definitely recommend using the Pen tool, but it's not really what I'm going for right now. It's not selecting; it's because there's two. Here we go. We'll go ahead and just change some of these colors. I'm going to try to keep it consistent with the colors that I already have in the piece. Let's go maybe there. Really, every shape you're going for a different color? No, not every shape a different color. I'm just going to keep a consistent, maybe like these four colors. Got it. Cool. Just so there's a little bit of variety. Sorry, I didn't mean every shape. I meant giving everything its own color because if I want to recolor it later, if I want to do that in desktop, then, it's really important that it has its own color. Yeah. I have this little flower guy. This's basically my dream '90s turtleneck. I didn't realize how retro this was until now, but it's okay. I think the whole audience, we're all just leaning into it. I think we're just going with the retro vibe today, if it's [inaudible] today. I don't have to get too crazy with this because I'm going to end up making it a pattern. I just want to make sure these shapes make sense contextually together. Then, I think, just adding a couple more. I'm going to make this a stroke. I'm going to go to my properties and make the end round. Let's add a couple more of those. Maybe make this a different color. Now, this one, make this a different color. As you can see, we have semi-pattern going on here. Now, I'm going to show you how I make this into a pattern. I'm going to go ahead and lock my other layers with the outlines. Let me just hide this right here. I should have locked it to begin with, because I did something there. What I'm going to do is lock this. It's all part of the process. It is. Somewhere I hit a stroke and it was selected. I'm going to undo this, but I have it copied so it should still be there. There we go. We're going to go over here and paste it, make sure it's not selected. Undo is probably number one most important feature of all things. Go ahead and paste that, there we go. I did not lose what I did because I was very scared for a second. I have this pattern right here. Sorry, I'm moving fast. I'm going to go to, I think, I'm going to do grid repeat. Wow. I'm going to move it off the artboard so I can actually see what I'm doing. Wow. There are some fun settings that you can play with in here. You can flip rows around. Let's see. It doesn't lined up perfectly, but what I can do is I can come in here and I can actually move these shapes around so I get something that fits together a little bit better. That is truly magic. That's so cool. It's definitely one of my favorite tools. So cool. Game changer. Agreed. I like something like that. Let me see. We're just going to get it to a point where it doesn't look too similar on every one. Is this also something on Illustrator desktop or is this just Illustrator for the iPad? This is just for iPad. I believe they're bringing it to desktop. People from Adobe, you can [inaudible]. That's so great. I don't know if that's real. This is so cool. I'm just going to move this around a little. It's like designing your own kaleidoscope. Yeah. You can because you have the radial repeat so you can make really cool kaleidoscope-like designs. I can move this around if I want to show more of that, if I want to scale it up. I think I want to do something a little bigger. This pattern isn't perfect, but it's here. I can always tweak it. I just want to show you all how I would create a pattern. I'm sure you would be going through this much less quickly if not for our [inaudible] Absolutely. What I'm going to do in order to build a pattern in the shirt is I'm going to duplicate it so that it's on the top. I'm going to create a clipping mask. I have the shirt duplicated, I'm going to just go ahead and get rid of the fill so I can see the stroke and I'll just make it a color. Then, I want to put this on top of the shirt and going to my layers, make sure that it's underneath the shirt. But because it's in a mirror repeat, I'm going to have to take it out of here. I'm just going to go over here, cut it, and then I'll paste it back. I think that's the easiest way to do it because I can't quite get into all the layers because it's in a mirror repeat, so I just have to copy and paste it. Let me just see where I pasted it. Great, it's on the top now. Perfect. Maybe we make this a little bit smaller so you can see everything. If you see this button right here, I don't know exactly what it's called, but you're able to use this to also select the shape that you want to create, the clipping mask clip and also the pattern. I have both of those selected and I'll hit clip, make clipping mask. That's so cool. Yeah. Then, I also want to add it onto the shirt so I'm going to just double-click that, and I'll go and copy it, and paste it. I just double tap when I paste it. I'm going to do the same thing I did before by selecting the arm, copying it and I'll paste it. Perfect. I'm going to go back over here. I'm going to make sure this covers the whole sleeve. I want a little bit of a different pattern for that part in different side of it, so I'll select that, select the pattern, and then make a clipping mask again. Wow. I think we're getting a little bit of the pattern underneath it, which I can fix super easily. For the clipping mask, I'm just going to move it so that it doesn't overlap that part. Right, because it was showing you double the pattern. Yeah. Because it's transparent underneath so you can see the one under it. I'm just going to move it, and I'll add a point here, so it lines up, and use a Direct Selection tool. Nice. How does that look? The coolest shirt. [inaudible]. So '90s. [inaudible] Hit me up. I just copied it. Because this one wasn't a part of the Grid Repeat, so I just copied it and paste it and moved it over. That's looking really cool. This was made so quickly, this is probably my fastest illustration ever.
8. Finishing Touches: Next, we're going to add some textures and other final details to finish this up. The other thing that I wanted to show you-all is how I would add texture with Illustrator for iPad because typically this is something that you would think you would do with desktop. But I found a cool way to do it here. I go to my files, and I have a folder of textures that I downloaded with high-resolution PNG textures. Thank you so much. I have this one, I think the one that I want. Oh yes, this one. I normally download, I normally use bad-break textures. So add one that's already been downloaded. I'll go ahead and just resize that to cover the entire board. Then I'll go into my Properties panel and play with the appearance settings. Probably either multiply or Color Burn, I think multiply you got to see a little bit more of a texture and then turn down the opacity a little bit. Fun fact, True Grit Supply, they just put out textured spread like Illustrator Photoshop that are infinitely scalable. I just bought those. They were really fun to play with. I might use it for an illustration that's going to be really large. If you're worried about that, I would definitely try them. That's awesome. Tell us like, why do you like to add texture? It's so subtle and yet I can see the difference, but talk a little bit about just like, what that does for your pieces. I think that texture just adds a little bit more of a human touch to it, almost as if it was printed out on paper, and it takes away the harshness of it being all digital. I've heard a lot of people say that to me as well, that there's kind of a softness to it. It just doesn't look like Stark. Look at this masterpiece. Love it, tell us in twenty seconds what you did with the background. I just use the pencil tool and I just pre-head from some blobs in the background because I just wanted there to be a little bit more interest and texture. I think I'll probably, we'll keep working on this and keep tweaking it so that it's more refined. But I feel like this is a really great start and you can see how in just an hour with a sketch, you can bring something to life with just like some really cool features. Totally.
9. Q&A: Now let's switch gears and open it up to some questions from the audience. How do you select multiple things when you're on the iPad? An easy question that could be Googleable, but also, is it just by dragging to select or if you're selecting. I use the touch modifier that I was struggling to come up with in paper earlier. Let me just hide the texture real quick so I can show you. Essentially we'll select. They [inaudible] like everything. Okay. You can drag, but if you want to get more specific and you just have smaller details, you can select one and then you hold the touch modifier and select the other objects or as many objects as you need to. Awesome, okay. Cool. That's like Command key on your? Yeah, exactly. How do you stop yourself from obsessing about how perfect your illustrations are? When do you stop working on your sketch? Honestly, it's never going be perfect, I think that's the beauty of illustration. It's not supposed to be perfect. I think I get it to a point like my sketches are all really rough, to be honest. Because I'm usually pretty eager to get into the software and play around with it. But I think it's done when you feel like it's done, there's no real right answer. It's just really up to you. Yeah. I know that's not really a great answer. How long do you spend on sketch versus then once you're an Illustrator really designing it out? It's a good question. I would say I probably spend maybe an hour at most. It's pretty rough. A lot of the times for this sketch, I actually use a reference photo, I went on Stock C for this one. I think I searched for woman sitting because I'm not great with proportions off the top of my head. I looked at it and I had it on my computer and I was drawing on my iPad. I liked her pose, she was doing a similar thing, she was on the floor touching her hair. That helps take a lot of the guesswork out of what does this imaginary person do? Racheal asks, how did you start off in the design industry? I actually discovered Photoshop when I was 12 years old and that got me wanting to be a graphic designer. I've discovered Photoshop and I was like this is it, this is what I'm going to be. That was kind of the rest was history. I went to high school that actually had a printing press and I learned Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator in high-school. That's amazing, my high school did not have that. Very cool. It was really amazing because we had a whole printing press and you have to experiment with different software and programs. We did paper binding and it was awesome. When do you use Illustrator versus do you ever venture into Photoshop for different types of projects? Yeah. I tend to use Illustrator the most out of the Adobe products. I have used Photoshop in the past, but I think that my style was just a little bit different. I would say right now, I mostly use Illustrator and then I've been incorporating illustrated for iPad as much as I can. A couple questions about your freelance work. How do you get linked up with clients if you do work for like brands and clients. Then also how has this weird year in quarantine changed the type of work or the volume of work that you're doing? Yeah. How do I meet or how do you get clients? Yeah. Do you work with brands? What kind of clients do you have? I am sure that has come up over time. Absolutely. When I first started out, I was definitely working with a lot of local artists. I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. I was working on choirs and things like that. I really focused on social media as well as making sure my portfolio reflected the type of work that I wanted to get. I say this all the time, but I really only put work in my portfolio that I would want to be hired for. Even though I had a 9-5, I was working as a graphic designer for a corporate real estate investment, brands, and things like that. It wasn't fun really. It wasn't the work that I would want someone to want to hire me for. I was putting my personal work or even if I did have commissions like my flyers, and eventually brands would see that and certainly reach out to me. Once I started taking myself seriously, creating a stereo social presence, that really helped. Now, I would say Instagram is probably one of the greatest tools, invested time into there. The more you do work with brands, the more they're gonna see your projects, there's going to be word of mouth. They'll tell other people about you. I haven't had to do any real like advertising. I haven't done any cold calls or cold emails. I feel like my biggest thing has really just been a cliché, but manifesting. Picking out the type of work that I want to do and seeing who they hire. What kind of people do they work with? Would it align? What are their values? Does it align with my values? The type of brands that tend to reach out to me, they typically can identify with the things that I say about myself on my website. I say that I want to work with people of color. It just sort of ends up aligning because they already have seen who I am. That makes a lot of sense. Putting out there what you want to get back. It works. We could call that [inaudible] or just great strategy. I think one more question here, has your work changed at all since during quarantine? Or how do you stay creative when it's kind of a weird time? Yeah How has my work changed during quarantine? I think that the biggest thing that's come out of quarantine is really just believe in myself. Because earlier this year, I remember I applied to be Adobe Creative resident. This is before they changed to program. This is when it was still the one year long. I said in my application that I wanted to spend time finding my voice as a designer and illustrator. It's so funny because just a few months later I was like, what? I feel like I have a voice and like I know what it is and nothing changed, it was more so just my point of view changed. Physically my style, I don't think that has changed. If anything, I just keep finding new ways to express myself. I don't really want to limit my style to one specific way. It's just my mindset. I love that. Just settling into you and your work. That's great.
10. Final Thoughts: That's everything for today. Thank you so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed my class. I hope that you learn some new skills that you can take with you into your own illustration practice, or at least just got inspired by the way that I do it. I just want you to remember that there's no right or wrong way to illustrate or design. You are you, and that's what makes you amazing. You just let yourself experiment, there's no right or wrong way. You can often see even at my Skillshare class, I made six designs. It's okay if you want to try some different colors, try few different ways of doing things. There's really no right or wrong way to express yourself, so you might think as takeaway. I would love to see what you made, so please share your project in the private gallery.
Sophia Yeshi, Graphic Designer and Illustrator
