Transcripts
1. Magical Art - Textures and Blend Modes: Hey, everyone. My name is Jane Snedden Peever, I'm a designer and illustrator, and I want you to join me in this second class of a three-part series on digital illustration on the iPad Pro, using Procreate. In this class, we're going to explore all of the blend modes available to you in Procreate. We're going to learn how to use them with colors, with textures, and ultimately with your design. Once we've explored the blend modes, and we have a better understanding of them. Then we'll apply what we know to a design that I provide for you. Once we understand how the blend modes work with solid colors, then we're going to add in some texture with multiple colors. I'm going to walk you through the texture brushes that Procreate offers, and then we're going to create our own. We'll create some of our own backgrounds, and I'll show you my tips and tricks on how to get these backgrounds blended beautifully into your designs. I provide you with lots of demos and examples of how I use my techniques, and I'm going to encourage you to explore and experiment with as much texture and color as you want to. Even though this is part of a three-part series, each course is designed to stand on its own. I provide you with all the files that you need to work through the individual course. My goal is to encourage you to explore creativity on the iPad. Join me now, where we play with color, texture, and blend modes to create some beautiful, magical art.
2. Supplies and Layered Files: Hey everyone, thanks for joining me today. This is the second class in a three-part series on how I do my designing on the iPad Pro, using the Procreate app. Before we get any further into it, I want to show you what supplies and tools that I use, as well as how to find the downloads you're going to need for this class. You will need an iPad. I use an iPad Pro and I've just recently upgraded to that. I often have people ask if they can use an earlier model of iPad, and as long as the Procreate app works on it, which I think is a 10.0 iOS update as long as it has that, your experience may differ in the fact that newer technology always will move faster and smoother. Be aware of your file size as this can also be an issue with the older models as in the number of layers you're working on. The good news is, Procreate just came out with a small update that improves the performance of their app on the older versions of the iPad. I really enjoy using my Apple Pencil, it gives me really great detail and in some of my classes where I do a lot of detail, this can actually be a factor to consider. However, in this particular class, it's about blend modes, textures, and painting, which you should be able to do most of this with your finger. I really enjoyed painting with my finger for the tactile experience. You will need the Procreate app, this is the one that I use for the class and you can find that in iTunes or the App Store, it is a small fee for it but it is well worth it. You will also need the Dropbox app, if you don't already have it on your iPad. I highly recommend the free account, but you do not require one. You just need the app on your iPad for it to be able to speak to the Procreate app. I have files for you that have all the layers separated out and I've experimented, and the best way to get them into Procreate is, if you have the Dropbox app and I'm going to show you coming up in a minute how to get those on your iPad and into Procreate. I have one handed for you in the attachment files to give you an overview of the blend modes and is a great thing to have sitting beside you while you work through this class, to help you understand the difference between the blend modes as you go. Now I'll show you how to find all these files. Go into the Course page and scroll down and you'll find Your Project section. Over to the right, you'll see attach files and there is the handout. Click on the handout and it pops up, it's a PDF. You have a few choices here, you can either print it out by going up a little arrow at the top. When you click on that, you have the option to print. If you have a printer that's connected by Wi-Fi to your iPad, you can print it out that way. Otherwise, you can save it in iBooks, which is on all the iPads and you can have it in your iBooks waiting for you to read. That's the handout. If you scroll further down on the same page, you can see a link here that is the access to the folder that has the download files in Dropbox. If you open that up, the apple open up automatically and the folder will open up in front of you without having to sign in..PSD files are the layered files and you want to import those into Procreate. One at a time, you're going to select one of these files, it will pop up with a preview of the file, just a picture, and these three dots up in the top right hand corner are what you want to click on. Touch those and you'll come up with this window, you want to Export. Another window will open and you choose Open in and now it will export the file and give you an option of what to open it in. When the next window pops up, you're going to scroll across until you find Add to Procreate. Click on that, and now it will send it to Procreate. At this point, you have to exit out of this app and go back in and open up Procreate, then it will import your artwork into the Procreate app. Give it a minute to import, and it will pop up on your screen. Now you have the file already to go in Procreate with all the layers waiting for you. How I created this file is covered in the course, coloring your line art and using masks to paint it. If you haven't taken that one yet, I highly recommend it as it'll help you understand how we got to this point. You can then go back and import all those files at once or only import them as you need them. I've also included the texture brush that I've created in this class. When you click on it, a window pops up, you choose Download, then you choose Direct download, a window pops up and it recognizes it as a Procreate file. You'll then choose Open in Procreate and it automatically goes into your brushes. You can check it out by going into one of your files into the brushes and look in your Imported folder. It should be the first brush sitting at the top. I think that covers the technical stuff. When you're ready, let's get started on the first lesson.
3. Exploring Blend Modes: Let's get started exploring the blend modes. So you're going to open up the file "Values for BlendMode.PSD" that I provided for you in the Dropbox. You'll have that loaded into your procreate area at this point. When you open the file, you're going to see two layers in this file. One is going to be the gray valued circles, and it's going to be lying on top of three colored lines, and they're going to be on separate layers. So now let's explore the layer window itself. Now with the layer window open, we're going to look at the different parts of it. On the right-hand side up at the top, you're going to see the letter N and this represents normal mode, and that's the mode that each layer starts in. Down here you're going to see normal highlighted in blue. The blend mode will be highlighted in blue, the one that is active. If you go down even further, you're going to see the categories. They're all lying here beside each other: darkened, lightened, contrast, difference in color. Within those categories are the modes themselves. Right now darkened is highlighted in blue down below, and these are the options given in the darkened mode. Normal is our first mode and it is the mode that every layer starts in. So we don't even think of it as a blend mode. You can change the opacity on the normal mode. Normal always comes at 100 percent so you've always got a full layer on top of another layer. By changing the opacity, you're allowing the bottom layer to start showing through the top layer. So that's how normal works, and we just take it for granted because we use it all the time. Just a quick note here as to why I picked these three colors, green, orange, and the blue. If you desaturate them, you can see that I pick three different values, so a light, a medium and a dark. When we're working with blend modes, values are important. I wanted to explain why I picked these colors. Now we're going to get started with our blend mode, and we're starting with darkened. We're going to choose multiply so you just click on the word multiply and it will go blue, and you'll get to see the difference over on the left-hand side. I won't get too technical, but I'm going to try to explain what's happening here. Multiply is combining the pixels of the top layer and the bottom layer. Everything gets darker. Basically where the layers overlap, it gets darker and then the white just disappears. In the darkened modes, white is considered neutral. In the second one, Linear Burn, now you've got a decrease in the brightness of the bottom based on the top. There's more contrast than the multiply. Then with the last one, Color Burn, we have an increase in saturation from the bottom layer coming through. Again, I don't want to get too technical talk, I just want to do a visual, follow along with me and a short explanation. Now we're going to go back and try lightened, and so we start at normal and then we choose the lightened mode. It's choosing the lighter of the two between the top and the bottom, and black is now neutral and disappears. Next we have screen which combines the top and the bottom, enlightens them and this is a really popular one. Moving on to add, which adds pixel values to lighten the top layer. Then our final one is Color Dodge, which brightens and increases the saturation of the bottom based on the top, and it operates like the reverse of the color burn in the darkened mode. Now we're moving into contrast mode where white remains and black remains, but notice that 50 percent gray in the middle is now disappeared. We're now using overlay mode and this one's really popular. Moving onto hard light, this one uses multiply or screen on the bottom color based on the top. Then when we move on to soft light, this is uses the color burn or color dodge on the bottom based on the top and has a softer effect than the overlay. So now we're going to move on to the difference modes. We're going to start with exclusion. In this one, the white inverts and the black and the 50 percent gray don't change. Then we're going to move on to difference. Black again, no change and the white and the light inverts so there's a little more saturation there. Then into subtract mode, which darkens by subtracting the brightness, dark colors lighten the image. So you'll see the white now is black. Now we're going to move into the final one, which is the color modes. Our first one is going to be hue. Now here you're going to see the values show up. The top is all light gray and the bottom is all dark gray because you're using only the value of the base layer in this one. The next one we're going to use is saturation, and it's not too different from the hue in this case. Again, its bottom hue and luminance with the top saturation. Then we're moving on to color, which is the bottom luminance with the top hue and saturation, and then finally luminosity, which is bottom hue and saturation with top luminance. It's all to do with hue saturation and luminance but it just depends on what's on top and what's on bottom. You're going to see when we flip these that you're going to get a very different look using this mode. It does make a difference as to which layers are on top and which ones are on the bottom. We're going to flip these now and give it another go. It's good to have that sheet of the terminology with you and explaining the blend modes. We're really just going to work our way through the ideas through this class so don't get too stuck on the actual terminology we're using. It's a visual process and we're going to play with them as we work our way through the class. We're going to go back and start with the darkened modes again and walk through visually how it works now with the colors on top and the gray values underneath. Starting again with the normal, I'll show you the opacity as we lower the opacity of the stripes, more of the grays start to show through so it's just reverse of what I showed you last time. Again, remember to play with this lots because the best way is to move through it slowly and your own pace. I might be walking you through quickly here, but I don't want to take too much of your time because we're going to play with them as we work through the designs. We're going to take opacity backed up to 100 percent and we're going to start to work through our modes. Our first one is darken, and we're going to multiply and again the white disappears. Some of these are going to look the same as they did reversed, and some are going to look quite different. We move down to Linear Burn and then Color Burn. Here you're going to see a difference because the background has completely disappeared. That's because you're working with the saturation of the base layer and the base layer's background is white. Then we're going to work through the lightened modes. I like to go back to normal to know where we're starting from. Again, you're seeing more of the circles define this time because again, the circles are on the bottom and that's what's showing through the top. The top is acting like a screen. In most cases, some blend modes work from the bottom and some work from the top, most work from the bottom. But occasionally they're going to be working from the top. In this case because of our background on our circles is white, this is when you're going to see the difference of only the circles taking on the color of the top layer. Again, as I walk you through each one of these blend modes one at a time, it's more about the visual look that you're seeing. You learn them as you use them. It is a very mathematical concept. As much as I loved math, I'm more of the visual art person, so I've learned over time simply by using them and what I like the look of. It is good to have kind of a basic idea of how these work, because if you know what you're looking for, you don't want to have to go through every one of the blend modes to see if you can find it. That's when it's good to have a bit of a concept of what these blend modes are doing but for the most part, it's very visual process, and depending on what elements you're using in your design, and what values and what textures, you're going to get different looks that maybe you don't expect. Although I do have my favorites such as the multiply, the overlay, the soft light and the color, I won't give up on the other ones because I'm always surprising myself with what I can find when I let myself use all the different blend modes. Hopefully this gives you some inspiration to go and experiment on your own and play around with this particular file. You can even change up the colors yourself and see how that reacts for you. Go and have some fun and will see you in the next lesson.
4. Blending The Flats: So now that you have a better idea of what the blend modes mean and how they work. Let's open our next file, which is the Flats and Line Art.psd file I provided for you. I'm just going to resize this over to the side so you can see the Layers window better. Then I'm going to open the Layers window. I have the colored squares on one layer. I have the Flats on its own layer combined, and I also have the Flats in a grouping all separated out as well. I have Line Art in black and I have Line Art in white all on their own layers, so we can kind of play around with it. We'll start with the Flats layer, I believe it's called, flats merged, in the file that I gave you. We're going to start working our way through the blend modes one at a time. We have the Blend Test Squares on the bottom, and we have the Flats layer on top. Because we have all the gray flats on one layer at this point, you get to see as we work our way through the blend modes, how they react and give the design a very different look. Because the values of the gray are all reacting differently with the blend mode and the layer underneath. Now, I'm just running through them because we did go through similar stuff in the previous video. But what I want to show you in this one is how I have the flats separated out and how we can play with the different looks this way. So I've turned off the flat layer that has the merged, and I've turned on the group and opened it up. Now I'm going to work through each of the layers in the flat group and change each one to a different blend mode. I'm going to show you how that can give your design a more unique look with a little more control. In the first one, I used Multiply, and then in this second flats layer, I used Overlay. As I work my way through these, I'm going to try to give you a broad range of the different blend modes so that you can see how they work together to create a unique design. You can see that I've used grays in my flats, I do that so that I can get the values down. If you start adding in different colors, it can be deceiving as to what the value of that color is. So once I establish the design with the gray values, then I can either add in color to the design using a blend mode, a color blend mode or overlay blend mode are good for that. Or I can change up the colors that are in my flats by going into the individual flat layer, selecting the contents, picking a different color, and choosing Fill, and that'll just change what color the flat is itself. That's another way that you can bring more color into your design. As we saw in the last lesson, the blend modes work off of the values, at least most of them do. So it's a really good idea to start with values and the grays are the best way to do that. So once you have your design established with the grays and whichever blend modes you want to use, you can change the color and you can also bring in different variations of colors. So let's say that you want you design to have a blue tone to it, then your background is going to be blue, and that's the one you're going to use with the blend modes. But let's say you want to switch up the same design and change it to green hues, then all you have to do is change the background and everything else changes with it. I'm still just playing around here with the different layers and the different blend modes. You'll find that you work your way back and forth. You'll pick a blend mode, you'll work your way down, then you'll find something you like, but it doesn't work with something you did earlier so you just go back up the list again and you find a new blend mode that'll work for that one. It's really endless the combinations that you have to work with here and you're just trying to find the ones that work best for the design you're looking for. This takes on a whole new dimension when you start to add in texture, which we'll get into. You can also play with the opacity that makes a big difference in some of the blend modes. Don't forget about your line art, you've got a black line art and a white line art and you can even select that and change the color of your line art as well as the blend mode of it. Now that we've worked with it in this configuration, I'm going to take the blend test squares and I'm going to move them above the flats, I dropped them into a group there by mistake, we'll get rid of that group. Now we're going to have the blend test squares above the flats, which is going to give you a whole another range of looks. I've turned off my group that has all the flats individually, and I've turned on my merged layer of flats, so that I just have the two layers I'm working with. I do all my blend modes on the Blend Test Squares and now you can see that I'm getting a whole different range of looks from this configuration. Now you'll notice with the colors being on the top and the grays is being on the bottom, which is where your design flats are. You're going to end up with a lot more white backgrounds and that's simply because of the way that the blending works. If there's nothing underneath it or if it's white as we saw in the last lesson, it acts as a neutral or it negates it. You'll end up with no background in some of these blend modes. That's something to keep in mind if that's what you're looking for. Now, I've tried all of those, I'm also going to turn on the line art and then you can take your blend test squares and put them on top of a line art so that the line art itself gets blended into the rest of the design. Basically, I've shown you how to experiment here, how to play around and how many different looks you can get. It really all depends on the placement of your layers, what you have on top, what you have on bottom. Again, what's blending from what direction and which blend mode that you're using. The best way again to learn them is just to play with them. So it's good to have a basic understanding. It's good to know which ones you really seem to like. But I wouldn't get too worried about whether you understand the whole theory behind it, because experimentation is the best way to understand how these blend modes react. I encourage you to take this file and play with it to your heart's content. The best way is to practice with it, if you find that you mess it up in a way that you don't think you can fix it, you just download another fresh version out of that Dropbox. Have fun and we'll see you in the next lesson.
5. Blending with Texture: Now we're going to try adding a little bit of texture in and see how that works with the blend modes. We're going to go back in and open up our values for Blend Modes dot PSD file that we used previously, and we're going to add a new layer in between the two layers that are already there and this is where we're going to put our texture. In order to see what we're putting on this layer, you need to turn off the visibility of the other two layers. We're going to go into the brushes and pick something that's already in there. I'm going to go into spray paints and I'm going to go and pick the flux brush, this one, it'll give a nice texture that will get a good idea of how the blend modes work. I'm going to go in and put it in three different shades of gray, because I want three different values on this layer. I'm going to make the brush as big as possible and I'm just going to spray paint that gray onto the Canvas. Then I'm going to pick a lighter gray and I'm going to put that one over top of it all in the same layer and then I want one more gray on there, so we'll, pick something in between. Then I'm going to add that in on the same layer. All three of these grays are going to be splattered onto this one layer of texture. Now we're going to turn on the other two layers, makes sure that you can see them because we want to work the blending with all three layers on. We're going to do the blending from the top layer, which at this time is going to be the three lines of color. First we're in normal mode and we play with the opacity to see what's underneath. Then we're going to start to work through the blend modes themselves. As you can see as we cycle through the darkened modes and through the lightened modes, you're starting to get those little flicks of paint showing through as three different values of the color that's on top. On the orange, you'll notice you get three different versions of orange showing up on the main orange. Again, wherever there's color on the bottom, two layers, this time it's picking up the color from the top layer. You can see a lot of the flex showing up where it used to just be a white background. Then we're going to move on to the difference modes and then into the color modes, just so you can get an idea of how each one is showing up. Again, I'm only dealing with grays on the bottom, so the circles are gray and the flux themselves are gray. You're only dealing with a certain number of colors. All of this happens because we had the colors as the blend mode. Now we're going to flip it, put the colors on the bottom and put the circles on top and now we're going to see what kind of a difference that creates. We're back in normal mode and we're just going to play with the opacity to see what's underneath. Then we go back into the Blend Modes, starting with the dark end. Now you'll notice as we work our way through this, the colors are now on the bottom and the top layer is the range from white to black. The specs underneath aren't picking up the color anymore, because it's not on top anymore. Now it's picking up the grays and the black and the white, and that's what's showing up in the circles. Keep in mind that the top layer with the circles on it has a transparent background. You aren't seeing anything happen in the background, because there isn't any background on that layer. When it comes down to it, there's a few key points to remember that when you're working in the dark end modes, white is neutral and disappears. When you're working in the light end modes, the white remains, but the black is neutral and disappears. In the contrast mode, black and white both remain, and the 50 percent gray is neutral. Those three things are pretty key when you're trying to figure out what part of your design is going to show up and what part is going to be negated. Every blend mode is comparing the top layer and the bottom layer based on different criteria. That's what's in the handout is a general idea of what those criteria are. Again, what you're going to learn is the more you use them and your preferences in color, you'll start to learn which blend modes work best for the ideas and concepts that you're trying to create. Once you play around with exchanging the layers and using the top layer and running it through all the blend modes. Another thing you can do is start to combine the blend modes on the multiple layers. Let's say that we have our top layer as a Color Burn, and then we change our middle layer, which is the textures, to a different blend mode. Sometimes this is going to make a difference and sometimes it isn't. Again, it all depends on the order of the layers themselves. The trick is to start mixing up the blend modes on each layer, so that they pick up something different from the layer below them. If you're working with layers that have the same colors on them, you're not going to get a whole lot of impact because there isn't very far you can go when you've already got the same colors. I have the texture in the grays and I also have the circles in the grays, so if I try to blend those two layers themselves, there's not a lot I can do with them. There are some things that I can create, but you get a lot more impact when you start dealing with color. Let's create a new layer, and I'm going to add some texture in, in-color instead of the black and white. I'm going to use the spray paint again with the black. But this time I'm going to put in the blue, the green, and the orange, which is the same colors I have in the Leonhardt. Now again, I did say to mix up the colors, but what I'm doing here is I'm spreading the blue, the orange, and the green all over the canvas so that it's going to interact differently with the lines of green, orange, and blue. Let's see how this works when we place it in between the layers and we start working through our Blend Modes again. Now I'm just going to play around with where I place them and how I use the Blend Modes. Initially I have this top layer turned off and I'm working on the Blend Modes on the new colored layer. I can now turn at the top layer on now that I've got some Blend Modes worked into the texture, and try some more Blend Modes on top of that and see what effects that create. This method creates a compound effect. You're compounding your blend modes and each layer is bringing in a new blend mode based on the values and colors that are on that layer. This is very much trial and error because once you start compounding the blend modes, you're not quite sure what you're going to get, but you can really come up with some beautiful different ideas. You'll start to notice as you play through them that the blend modes, some of them give you what seems to be the same look. If you look closely, there's very subtle differences and some blend modes will give you more saturation and it's very subtle, or some will create more contrast. You can also play with the opacity. Certain blend modes like Color Burn or color dodge can be too intense, and if you lower the opacity slightly, they give you a more subtle look, but it gives you a much more I appealing love. Take these ideas and play around with this file, adding a different texture if you want out of the procreate file. We're going to go ahead and start exploring some textures next, and I'm also going to show you how to create your own texture and you can bring those into your design as well. Use this file as though it's your worksheet. You can download it and a couple of times so that you can have a fresh copy or just duplicate it in your gallery, so that you always have that clean, fresh version to start off with, an experiment to your heart's content. The best ideas are often found by mistake and through experimentation. I encourage you to get used to these blend modes. Use them add in different layers of texture and see what you come up with. In the next lesson, we'll get a little more into the textures that procreate offers.
6. Texture Brushes: Before we get into creating our own textures, I want to explore the texture brushes that come with the procreate app. They provide a really nice range of textures and shapes that we can work with as well as pre-set brushes. If you go through their brush menu, you'll find all sorts of folders with different categories. Let's take a look at one of the ones they've already preset. I go into the industrial category and I picked this wasteland brush. When I click on the brush, it opens up, and I go to the source section, and I can pick a shape source by clicking on shaped source. Then I can choose pro library and go into their pro Library, in their library, they have really nice selection of shapes and textures to work with already set. I'm going to show you how it works, the way that they already have it set up before we make any changes to it. I'm going to go back into the wasteland brush and I'm going to make sure that I have the brush size that I want, and the opacity here on the side with the sliders just going to draw it across using a black ink. It's pressure-sensitive, it depends on how hard I push. I can go in and duplicate it, because I want to make some changes and I don't want to affect the original. You can see this is a duplicate by the little symbol in the left top corner. It doesn't exist in the original, but it does in your duplicate, a little pencil symbol. I'm going to go back in now and make some changes. I'm going to start by changing the shape source, so I'm going to go into their pro library after clicking on shapes source. Then I'm going to pick from one of the many options I have here that might give it a little difference. We're going to pick an hardest shape and I'll show you what I draw here. See how the hard edges show up more on the shape and not overly suitable for it, but you can go and take a look at how it affects it. You can go into the stroke and change the spacing. There's a lot of different levers in here that you can play with. I have touched on them in my other courses, so you can get an idea of all the different controls you have. Let's go back in and try a different shape. This time I think I'm going to pick this cloud shape down here in the bottom left. Again, we're working with the same texture, we're just changing the shape of the brush that puts it on a canvas. Again, you can go back in and check you're spacing out to see how you want this brush to look. Then we can go back into the canvas and we can draw it on and see what kind of a different look that we get from this. Textures is the same, shape that it's being applied with has changed. I'm going to go in one more time and pick another shape because there's so many to pick from. I'm going to choose this water flux and we're going to see what kind of a difference this one will make. I'm going to go in and draw on my canvas and you can see how the texture shows up in the flux. I can go to the left-hand side here and increase my brush size, and then when I draw again, the flux are bigger, and you get a little more texture in them. All these variations on this brush were from changing the shape, not the texture. We kept the texture the same and we just changed up the shape for each one. It's a good idea to go through their brushes and just take a look at the different shapes and sources they use for theirs. They get an idea of the combinations that are available and how they create unique look. Once we've done that, then we're going to go in and we're going to create our own brush. We're just going to use the library that they provide before we get into creating our own textures, pick the folder where you want your brush to go, and then there's a little plus sign on the top right. You click that, it opens up a new untitled brush. I'm going to start by selecting my green this time by clicking on select green, go into pro library, and then I'm going to scroll down and near the bottom there's a lot more texture ideas. I'm going to pick this one dots pattern, going to go back in and select shape into the pro library. I think I'm just going to pick a simple shape, medium hard, I think it has a little bit of a blur to it. Play around with our spacing under the stroke category and see how you can see the circles inside other circles. I'm going to play with the jitter, and the jitter spreads these little shapes out for me and it keeps the texture in the background, but it makes your shapes spread out somewhat, which I like for this idea. Then I'm going to go into the shape behavior. I don't really think there's much that's going to happen with this shape behavior because it's a circle. But going into the grain behavior, I can play with the movement slider, and I can also scale the texture in the background. There's also the option of zooming and rotations, you can play around with those sliders, and you'll see the effects immediately in the preview window. Here I'll probably changed the size limit just a bit. I don't want to make it too big, not going to do a lot with that. Now, I can go experiment with my brush on the canvas. You can see here I'm playing with quite a large brush size, so I'm just going to bring the brush size down a little bit, and there I get some little scattered dots with some really cool little texture dots inside of it. I can play with the opacity and that just brings down the whole contrast, which works for me. That gives you one idea of a brush that we can create all on our own. Let's do one more, I'm going to go back into my pro library for a green source, and I'm going to pick this aggregate. Then I'm going to go back into my shape and pick a shape source from my pro Library, I'm going to scroll down and use this water blotch too. We'll see what this gives us. Then I'm just going to play a little bit with my settings to make the brush look the way I want. I'm going to take the jitter right back down to none, and I'm going to play with the spacing. Now you'll notice with this spacing sometimes it gives you too much of a repetitive edge. You got to find that place where you like the look of it. Then if we go into the shape behavior in the green behavior, you can mess around a little with the scattering, with the rotation, and you can see if you can randomize up your pattern just a bit, just playing with the levers, moving them up and down, changing the sizing. We're going to see what this gives us, because sometimes you want a repetitive look and sometimes you want a very different look. You don't really know until you actually put the brush on the canvas as to what you're going to get. Now, let's test this brush out, if you're given small, you get a nice textured look. If I take it really big, which is what I really like to fill my canvas with texture, I get a very repetitive, almost a honeycomb lock. It might be what I'm looking for, but I might want more randomization. So really comes down to just playing around with it, and you have a great library that procreate gives you. Play with their textures in their shapes. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to create your own texture you to play with.
7. Creating Your Own Texture: Now we're ready to try creating our own texture brush. I've shown you how to use textures in the Blend Modes, and I've shown you where to find the texture brushes in Procreate, and how to use the images they already provide. Now let's get started on creating our own texture brush. The first thing we're going to need is a picture of some texture. Go ahead and take a picture of anything you want. I took a picture of the back of my couch. It's a microfiber fabric and we're going to create a texture out of it. The next thing you're going to need is a way to turn your picture into a black and white picture. What I use on the iPad is the app called Snapseed. You can get it at the App Store and it's a free app, and I'm going to show you here the way that I use it. Of course, there's lots of other ways you can do this and lots of other apps, but this one works for me, so I'm going to show you my method. Making sure that the picture we take is on our camera roll. We go ahead and open the Snapseed app. Tap anywhere to open a photo, and a window will pop up. Choose "Open From Device", or you'll see your picture sitting right there, and you just choose it. Now that we have the picture open in the snap seed, we go down to the pencil icon on the bottom right, and we're going to edit. When the tool window pops up, you want to choose tune image, which is the first one on the top left. All you have to do is select it and a window will pop up. You want to adjust the picture. So pick the one on the left that says adjust. A window will now pop up and give you some selections to choose from. You want to slide it down and start with contrast. Once you have contrast selected, you'll notice at the top there's a slider bar. You're going to take the contrast up to the very top, so says plus 100 by sliding your finger across the screen. Go back down and choose "Adjust", a window pops up. We're going to slide it down to saturation. Slide our finger all the way to the left and choose minus 100 for saturation. Again, we're going to go back to adjust, and this time we're going to go down, we're going to skip down and choose highlights. We're going to slide highlights all the way down to minus 100. Slide your finger to the left and then we go back into adjust, and go to shadows. Shadows you can play with. Sometimes you need to do something with it and sometimes you don't. But I'm looking for the most contrast I can find in the texture. We want this texture picture to have a very black and white look to it. Use your own judgment. You're going for that black and white look. Now we're going to go back into tools and I want to crop the image because I don't want this lower portion that's blacked out. I'm going to go back up, and I'm going to crop into just the top portion of this. I'm going to make sure I get as much detailed texture as possible. I don't want any sections that are pure white or pure black. I'm looking for the most contrasts with the most texture. Once I've decided on the area I want, I choose the check mark in the bottom right corner. Now I want to save in the top right corner, and I'm going to choose the Export option, and it's going to export it into my camera roll. Now we make our brush. Into procreate we go and we're going to go into our brushes. Go into the location where we want this brush to be. Open up the folder and you're going to hit the plus sign, end up with a new untitled brush. Now just as I showed you previously, we're going to create our brush, but I'm going to choose the shape out of our pro library. The shape of the brush I'm going to choose just as ink sponge. Then for the green source, I'm going to go into my camera roll and pull out that new black and white texture that I created in Snapseed. Choose "Photos", "Camera Roll" and it should be the first one that pops up in the corner because it was the last one that you saved on your camera roll. Now we have the shape source and a grain source. You can create your own shape source, but they have so many, I just use theirs. Now we can go back and check out all the settings. I am going to start with the stroke and I'm going to work with the spacing. I can just move that lever back and forth. I want this to ultimately create an overall texture. I don't want too much of a gap between them. My spacing is going to be pretty slim, but not so much that it creates a thick black line. I'm just going to work my way through the settings the way that I did in the previous lesson, playing with the scatter, the rotation, just to see if how much it can change up the look. Keeping in mind that I want this to be an overall texture, and I don't want it to have too much of a course green, but I don't want it to be blurred out either. Once I've made up my mind, I'm going to go in and make sure that my brush settings are large, and I'm just going to try it with a color, and see if it gives me the look that I'm looking for. Play around with this, change the brush sizes. See what kind of a look that you can get from it. If you want to change some of the settings, just go back into the brush itself. My size limit, I want to move up slightly because again, I want it to be an overall texture. I want my largest brush size to be quite large, much happier with that. If you want some of that texture, sometimes instead of swiping it across the canvas, you just dab it and then you don't get any blurred here stroke. I'm pretty happy with this. I think let's go try it in our design.
8. Testing Your Texture Brush: I want to show you now how to test this brush out. So I'm going to go open the Mandala design dot PSD file and I'm going to go into my brushes and find the brush that you created. I created the microfiber brush. There it is there, I'm going to create a new layer because this is the one I'm going to paint on. Then I'm going to go into my colors. I'm just going to use gray for now to create the texture, and I want my brush to be the largest it can be. I'm going to go in and turn off the other layers so that I can see what I'm painting. Now let's play around with this brush and see if it's going to do what we want it to. I'm going to label this layer. Again, it's a really good habit to get into, and now it's time to do some painting. So I'm just going to drag this around. Now I notice when I drag it, I get a blurry look, but when I dub it, I get more of the defined texture. I'm going to do some adjusting to my brush settings. So in my settings I think what I'm looking for is under the green movement. I want to slide this back to the left and let's see what result we get from that. Now hit undo to clean up our canvas and we're going to start again with this new setting. There that looks a little more like what I'm looking for. So let's just undo declare our canvas, and let's try one stroke at a time. So that's one setting. and then this is with it on the rolling. Now, it's definitely smearing more and I don't want that. I want more of this stamp look, I can bring the opacity down a little. The texture is a little overwhelming, so the opacity bringing that down a bit helps, and then I'm going to go back and clean that off. Back into my settings, slide it partially to the left, not all the way this time and if I stamp, that's the look I want. So if I slide it, still blurring a little, little more than the stamping. So I'm going to go back in and slide it all the way to the left. I think this is probably my preferred setting on this one because I don't want the smearing. It blurs out the texture that I'm looking for. So I think I'm good with this one, and I'm just going to keep the opacity down a little so we're good to go. Now then I'm happy with that, I'm going to go ahead and clear the layer. I can now go in and choose my grays and I'm going to create my background. So I just do a mixture of dabbing and strokes across the canvas. I can change the opacity and then I can add in a few other darker colors. I'll put in a little bit of black. I have the opacity a little low on the black, so I'm going to bring that up just a little bit. Now that's really contrasting, but I think I'm going to be able to pull some of that back out. So it's a work in progress. You just keep adding in texture. When I'm working with the neutrals, I like to add in a little bit of beige as well, and a little bit of the Browns and I just pile that paint right in there because what I'm going to do is use the eraser to pull some of that back out. Then when I feel that I have enough paint on the canvas, I'll go back in and use the eraser tool with the same brush that I just used, my microfiber brush and start pulling some of the color back out, but I'm keeping the texture consistent. I'm giving you a real time demo here of how I create my textures. I add stuff in, I take stuff out, I blend stuff together. So here I'm using the eraser and I'm pulling out a little bit of that black. It was a little too strong, but I want little pieces of it's still in there. Once I'm happy with that texture, I turn the flats back on. So to start with, I'm going to leave the texture on top of the flats, and then I'm going to start working through the blend modes from the top. You don't get as much of an impact when the texture sitting on top as you do with the texture underneath. But I still like to see what effects I can pull out, and the other thing you can do is with the texture lying on top, I can now go back and use my brush and start to add in more texture on that layer and actually see what the effect is going to be with the blend mode turned on. When you have finished your texture itself, you may think you've got a lot of contrast, but when you start blending it in, you realize that you can't really see it. Perhaps you want more of an impact, that's when you go back in and add more texture in with the Blend Modes turned on. Then if you find you have too much texture in there, you can do one of two things. You can either lower the opacity on your texture layer, or you can take your eraser tool back in and start pulling some of that color and texture back out again. The nice thing with digital painting is you never ruin your canvas by overworking it. You can overwork to your heart's content and go right back and start again. So with my Color Burn blend mode on, I added a lot more texture into my layer to see what it would look like. Now I'm going to run through all the other blend modes and see how they turn out. Let's flip things on their head and take the texture layer now below the flat. For this testing purpose, I want the flats all on one layer. So I'm going to duplicate this group because I want to keep those separate for another time. Then the second group, the group I just created, I'm going to merge all of these layers together. So the flats are now on one layer. Then I'm going to move that layer outside the group and delete the group. Now I have them all in one layer, I can start to work through the blend modes and see how they blend with the texture now lying underneath them. I'll work my way through all of the blend modes just to give myself an idea of what this texture is going to look like with the flats that I have. You may say, okay, so we're working with grays and neutrals. What if I want to try a little bit of color and see what this extra looks like with color. Well, instead of having to repaint my texture background with color and different values, I'm going to show you how I put a little bit of color in. So I create a new layer, place it between my thoughts and my textural layer and I go and then pick the color from the color palette that I'm looking for, and I fill that layer completely with that color. Next, I choose a blend mode to work with the texture underneath it. Overlay works great when you're just trying to add some color, but still keep the texture coming through from underneath. Now with your fill color and your texture worked out, you can go back to your flats layer and start working through the blend modes again. You're going to see a bunch of different looks now that you've got some color added in. I think our texture brush was a success. Now in the next lesson we're actually going to get into the design and work through the flats individually. So I'm going to show you how you can create different looks using the flats separately.
9. Blending Multiple Layers: Now, let's put this all together and start playing with our design. You're going to open the file mandala-design.psd that I've provided for you through the Dropbox link. You'll see in this one that I have all the flats separated out, I have the line art in black and I have the line art in white. So we've got everything we need to start working with and we're going to create a textured background. Create a new layer. We're going to move that down under the line art for now. You can do this background in any color palette you decide. I think I'm going to go with the blues and the greens, seems to be my favorite. I'll start with a blue and then I'm going to go into Brush section, choose any texture brush you want, including the one that you created. In this lesson, I'm going to use the water brush. The modified one that I'm working with, I've provided in your downloads. Let's go ahead and onto our new layer. Turn all the other layers off so that you can see what you're working on. I'm just going to start painting on my canvas. Now, notice my opacity, I keep about half-way down, a little below half, just so that I can put multiple colors on this background. Now, I'm going to add in a green on top of my blue. I like to add a about three colors, at least, if not more. Even if I'm sticking with one color, I like to add about three different shades of that color on, just to give it that depth. It provides a better texture when you've got a few different values going on your canvas. Randomly paint the texture all over the canvas in different places. You can use the Undo button if you don't like something you've done. I'm going to go into my Eraser tool and I'm going to use the same brush that I just used to paint the color on with. I'm going to erase some of it out using that same texture brush. It adds a little more interests to your background when you do this. This background recreating isn't so much a background that's just going to sit behind their design. It's going to actually interact with it when we use the blend mode. Once I'm happy with what I've done with it, I'm going to intensify it by duplicating the layer, and then I'm going to merge it down into itself. That just brings out all the colors and texture. We're going to take a backup copy of this background, duplicate it, and move it to the bottom and turn it off. That way if I mess up with it, I have another fresh copy that I can work with. Always good to have those backup. Now that I have it sitting above all my flats, I'm just going to play around with the blend modes with it lying on top of the flat colors. You get different looks by having the background on top and blending down as you would if you had the flats on the top, and the background at the back, blending the flats onto it, which is more common, but we're just going to try having the background on the top. I'm working my way through the blend modes here, just to get an idea of what it looks like. This is the best method to use if you just want a simple design. You want some texture and some color into it, but you don't want to do a lot of work on working all the flats out differently. You just lay your texture on top, you work your way through your blend modes, and you pick one that you really like. It doesn't give you the same control as having the flats on top, but it's really nice if you just want a quick colorful texture design. Now, I'm going to move that layer down below the flats and we're going to try using it as the base layer, and working all the line art and the flats blending into that one. I'm going to go up to the layer that has the line art and I'm going to choose the selection tool and make sure it's set on automatic. I'm going to select the background behind the mandala. Then I'm going to go back into the layers menu and I'm going to go down to the textured background that I have turned on. Using three fingers, swipe downwards on the screen and choose the option that says cut. This now removes all of the background that isn't lying directly behind the mandala itself. When we go back in and check out our layers, you can see that we now have a layer that has the texture lying only behind the mandala and it leaves all the area around it clean and clear. Before I go any further, I think I'm just going to duplicate my entire background one more time and turn it off. It's there if I need it, I like to have a few copies of those because I tend to get playing with them and then don't realize I have used up all the copies that I've made. Now, we're going to go into our flats and open them up, and start working with our blends. This section, I'm just going to speed up a little in mostly going through the different blend modes on each of the flat layers. This is a bit of trial and error, and experimentation. I do have my favorites, but I always like to see what kind of looks will show up in the ones that I don't use. I'm always surprised that one will work that hasn't worked before for me, so it's a learning experience as I go. I try to keep with the values of the flats originally, while I work my way through the first set. Sometimes, I'll find that say I've used a light beige and somewhere else I'd like the effect with a dark page, I will go in and select the contents of a layer, and change it to a different shade of gray or page, or I might even change it to one of the colors that's in my background itself. In this case, I could use some turquoise, it'll give a different look you never know until you try it. If you're a little unsure of how something might work, remember to always take a duplicate of the layer before you change it. The number of layers you can work with really does depend on the size of memory that your iPad has, so keep that in mind when you're working because you will be limited with layers if you don't have a lot of memory to work with. I can also change the color of the line art, which I've done here. I've changed it to gray and we did cover that in previous lessons and we did cover it in the previous class on coloring your liner as well. If you want them, go back and review that. I will then try to blend it down because you can blend anything that has a base underneath it. The line art itself can blend into the texture underneath it. At this stage, I pretty much have all the flats blending into the background texture. So the texture showing differently through each of the flats and I am using a multiple variety of blend modes to get that look. I'm also blending on line art down, so it kind of blends in but still has a defining feature around the flat themselves. The next layer I'm going to show you is to create a background that lies around the mandala. I go into the line art layer, I choose, "Select" and make sure it's automatic, and I select the Background. It only highlights the background of the mandala. I'm going to create a new layer and I'm going to fill it with the color of my choice, at the moment I'm choosing gray. I'm going to move that layer all the way down underneath the flats. The other option is to create a solid layer that lies only behind the mandala. Go into the layer I just created with the gray, select it. Now, hold the select an inverse with the two little arrows at the bottom, and now the area behind the mandalas selected. You can fill that with white and it'll keep the area behind the mandala clean and clear. When you change the background color, you can go down into your background color layer and you can work your way through the different colors to enhance the look of your mandala without it blending through the texture that's already there because the white blocks it for you and keeps it clear. This is a technique I use when I'm using a translucent texture because I had the capacity download on the water brush, you'll be able to see anything through it. I do that a lot in my texture. I usually create a colored background, usually a white one, right behind the texture itself so that I can change my background color to anything I choose. Now, you've created your first design using the blend modes. Let's go on to the next lesson and I'm going to show you some more techniques you can use.
10. Subtraction Method: We're using the same file as we did in the last lesson. We're keeping the textured background in the shape of the Mandala. I have my line art in black, white, and gray and I have my flats. I have them all set back to normal mode. When I turn on the group, I'm going to go through and turn all of them off one by one because I want to show you a method I use one at a time using the cut, copy, and paste function in addition to the blend modes. Now here we go. I'm going to duplicate the texture layer so that I have one that I can work off of and leave the other one on. I'm going to go up to the flats 1, select the contents, go down to the texture layer, and clear the contents. Now what it's done is cut out just that part of the flat from the texture layer. This is a subtractive technique where you're actually using the masks we've created with the flats to remove paint from your art piece. Now as I move on, I'm going to play around with the blend modes. I'm going to mix it up a little. Some I'll use subtractive, some I'll use blend modes. Remember whenever you are using the blend modes, you can also work with your opacity levels that also changes the intensity. Then I can also select the contents and change the color. In this case, I've changed it to a nice deep blue because I want to see how that interacts with my texture layer. Moving on to the next layer, I'm going to do some more subtractive. Again, I select the contents of that layer, I move down to the texture layer and I clear it and it disappears from the texture layer. Now the layers that I use the mask to clear off the texture layer, I leave those layers off. If I left them on, then I would see this solid color of the flats and that's not what I want. Their purpose has been to just create a mask that I can select the area and subtract it from my texture layer. You can see what's developing here is a piece that is all within the same tones. It's all the blue that I originally did the textured background with. I've used an assortment of techniques with the blend modes and the subtraction and I'm still getting that nice texture coming through on all the layers. Everything's working very nicely together and we're only working with that textured background and the initial flats. Let's try another variation on this technique. I'm going to do it on the flat seven layer. I've already used a blend mode, but that's okay. I'm going to select the contents of that layer. I'm going to go down to my texture that I'm working with and I'm going to use three fingers, swipe them down the screen and choose copy and then paste. It paste it in on its own layer so I didn't have to create a new layer, it did that for me. It took what was in that texture and it copied it, and pasted it on top. Now I actually have three layers of texture in that one area. I can play around with the blend mode of that layer and compare it to what I've done before. If I like what I've done and I've decided on a certain blend mode, I can choose to emerge it down into the textural layer or leave it as its own separate layer. I'm going to merge it in because I don't need that extra layer. Remember if you're working with a large canvas size or you're working with an iPad that has less memory, you will have to be conscious of how many layers you're using and get rid of any redundant layers that don't serve any purpose. When you're finished with your blending of your layers and you're happy with the look you have, you're going to want to start to work on the background color that lies behind. Unless you're doing a PNG in which you want a transparent background. We have that white shape lying behind our translucent watercolor texture. We can just go down to our background color layer and work our way through the colors to find out what it is we want to complement our piece and you can do this in real time. When you pull up on your color picker, you can just slide it around to see what you get. Now you're getting the hang of this. Let's go into the next lesson and play with some colors.
11. Changing Colors & Textures: Now what if you want to change the colors on this and play with different variations without having to repaint your texture layer. Well, I'm going to show you how to do that, so go into the layer of the colors you want to change, and then you're going to go up to your adjustment tools in the top left of your screen. Then you're going to go down into the enhancement tools, which is a hue saturation, brightness, color balance and curves. We're going to choose color balance to start with. In the color balance, you have the cyan, magenta and yellow on the left, and you have the RGB, red, green, blue on the right. You can use these sliders by moving them back and forth to give you different variations on the color tone. Once you've played around with that, we can go back into the adjustments and choose the hue, saturation and brightness. The first-line or top line is the hue and by moving the slider from the left to the right, you can choose from any of the colors on the color wheel to give your design a whole new look. Your second line is saturation, so moving the slider to the right will intensify your color and moving it to the left, we'll remove the color and give you the grays. The bottom line is brightness, light to the right and dark to the left. Your third option in the enhancements is curves. This is one of my favorite ones to work with. Out of the three of them, this is the most powerful. You work with the mid tones, shadows, and highlights. You can also control the channels down below, which is your overall gamma, or your red, green in blues, so there's a lot of different things that you can work with when you're using the curve. You can just experiment with is adding little points on the line and using the different channels. I've explained this one as well in my class, turning your sketches into whimsical arts, so if you'd like to learn more about it, I have touched on it there as well. Using these enhancement tools is a great way to change up the variation of colors in your design, especially if you've used multiple colors in your texture, that channels work really well. Now in addition to the color tools, you can also add more depth and variation into your design by adding another layer of texture, choose the layer that we created with the white Mandela shape, we're going to use this as our mask. Select the contents of that layer then we're going to create a new layer and use this mass to paint our new texture. I'm going to do this texture in a variety of grays, so I want to start with my first gray. You could do the texture in color and you could use different values of that color. For me, I just want to get more texture in, so I'm going to stick with the grays. My next step will be going into my brushes and I'm going to pick a different textured brush than I used previously. I did use the water brush, but this time I'm going to go into the industrial folder and I'm going to choose the rusted decay brush and this will give me an added layer of texture onto the water brush texture. I'm going to make sure I am on the right layer. I need the new layer and I also want my brush to be as large as possible because I'm going to create as much large texture as I can. I just started to paint and I choose different variations of the gray. I'll probably throw in a little bit of light beige and brown in there as well. Once I have all my colors picked, then I'll go to the eraser tool and I will use the same brush that I painted on with to remove some of the color. Now I want to change the colors on my flat, so normally just duplicate the flats but I'm thinking instead I'm going to show you, I'm going to go back into the gallery, duplicate this file and it takes a minute to duplicate it. Then I can go back in and change this file anyway that I want and I still have the original flats in the other file. I currently have all flats in neutral colors, but I think I'm going to change them all to blues now, so I go into each flat layer and I select the contents, choose a color and fill it. I'm going to go through all the flat layers, filling them all, now some of them you notice the blend modes are all what they used to be, so they're not all coming through exactly like you'd think they would, because they're all on blend modes. Which means now I go back and rework the blend modes based on my new colors and my new texture. I'm currently working with my new blue flats in my new gray texture using the rest of decay brush. I am keeping the watercolor texture background that I did before. I'm just leaving it off at the moment, but I may want to add it in and blend it in with the current texture that I'm working on. Now we're getting into having a lot more layers that we could work with and we can turn them on and off and blend them in with each other. The more you have to work with, the more unique looks you can get. I can play around with my background layer and make it different colors and I can also play around with the liner. I can work with the black liner, the white liner, the gray one that I put in and I can work all the blend modes with that as well. It's endless different combinations that you can work with when you have all these layers in your file. We've learned a lot of techniques up until this point, so take the time and practice. This all comes with time and the more you use it, the more familiar it's going to become and the more you're going to discover. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how we're going to add multiple textures in using the flats as masks and getting a unique look to our design.
12. Using Multiple Textures: You've learned a lot of things in this course. The last thing I want to show you is how to add different textures into the same design. If you want, you can download this particular file for this class. It's called multiple textures.PSD. We're just continuing on with the file that we've already been working with. But if you're looking for a clean copy, it is sitting there in the Dropbox. To begin with, I'm going to create a new layer and fill it with this rust color, and this is the color that I'm going to be blending with. Now, I'm going to open up my flats and start blending them. Oh, I have to turn off that white. You can't see the rust because the white was on. So turn off the white. Now my flats will respond to that background. So see once I remove the white, all of them will blend in with this new background, and we're going to use the flat as a mass. You go into layer, you select the contents, you create a new layer. We're going to go into our brushes and I'm going to pick a different texture that we haven't used yet. I'm going to pick the spray paints and pick flicks. I'm going to choose the color, I'm going with a beige, and on the new layer, I paint in the flicks. Once I'm done painting and all the texture, then I go back in and play around with the opacity and play with the blend modes until I find something that I like. This is just to get you started because you may come back and change it up once you get through the other layers. I'm going to go down to the flats four and open up a new layer. Now it's best to label these. I'm not really good at labeling my stuff and then trying to figure out what I've done. Label the texture layers as texture and then you'll know the difference between them and the flats. Once you get all the texture layers in here, it'll get confusing if you don't have them labeled and you won't know which ones are your solid flats and which ones are your textures. Now that I've labeled them, we're going go back in and find a texture that I want for this area. Again, I'm going to scroll through my brushes into the spray paint and I'm going to use this flowing hair brush. Making sure I'm on the new layer, I'm going to start to paint the texture into the area that I have masked out. It's good to work with the shape that you're filling. I'm working this flowing brush in directionally to flow and create dimension into the design. The nice thing with working with multiple textures is that you can tailor the texture you choose to the area you want to fill, and that way you don't have to use the same texture for the whole design. Once I have all of this texture added into the mast area, I can start to blend this layer with the rest of the design. You have a lot of things going on here because you have textures lying on top of your flats, and if you leave the flat layer on as well and have it blended with the background. Now your texture will blend with the flat, and as a result, will blend with the background. If you turn the flat off, then your texture's now blending directly with the background and gives you a different look. You have a lot of options working here, and this is where trial and error really works. It gets a little tricky to try to predict what's going to happen, but that's the fun of it. I'm going to change up the look a little bit by turning this gray background on. Let's try another texture. This time, I'm going to choose, I'm going to go into my inking and I'm going to choose the dotted line. In this case, I'm actually adding in more detail, not just texture. This is another thing that you can do. If you decided that some of your areas need a little more detail in them, then you add that in. Once you get all of those in, you can also blend them with the flats or with the background, just as you did with the textures. Having the textures on their own layers means that you can experiment as you go. You don't affect the rest of the design. If you decide that you don't like a texture you use, you can just turn that layer off or, you can experiment and try different textures in the same place. Just keeping them each on their own layer and deciding which one works best with your final design. I think that's my favorite part of this process, having lots of options and lots of choices, and not having to commit to anything until I get to the end. In fact, I can create so many different ideas that I often end up with quite a few variations of the same design that can look quite different and be their own individual art pieces. It's really amazing how you can take one drawing and just change the colors, the textures, and the way that they blend together, and you end up with something that people don't even recognize as being the same drawing. I'm speeding up some of these sections, but I wanted you to be able to see the process from beginning to end. So I really haven't cut much out because I wanted you to see how it evolves and how it goes from its beginning stages right through to a finished piece and how the pieces can look very different. I also want to encourage you to use as many different textures as you want. You really think that they might not go together. But surprisingly, they create a really nice effect when you put them in the same piece. When I'm working in my textures, I tend to stick to the neutral colors because I have to keep in mind that they're blending with both the background and possibly with a flat itself. So with a flat is a color of its own. Then once if you get too many colors mixed into the mix, you might muddle up the whole process. When I start with a design, I don't really have anything in mind, so that's why I try to stick with a gray values and then I get the idea of the tones, the contrasts, what I'm looking for. Then once they start to play with the colors, it's almost like something starts to pop, and then those are the colors that I go with. I will go into a design with a color palette in mind. I usually have those ready to go in my Procreate color palette. But I tell you once I get working on it, it always changes. I often find colors that I wouldn't even thought to put together, really working well together. Once you've worked all the texture and you don't want to forget about your background. We're going to use this layer that we have with the gray on it and we can change that to a different color. You just go and select it from the layer. Then you go into your color palette and choose fill, and it will fill in that portion that was selected on that layer. You can try a number of different colors if you want to. You also have this white layer you can use behind the mandala to create a colored or just a plain white background only behind the mandala itself. For example, here I select the contents on the white layer, I create a new layer, and then I fill it with another color, and now I have another color background for my mandala. It's good to have a few of them on different layers in, just turn them on and off to give you different looks. Of course, then you can just turn them off and work your way through the background colors themselves on the background layer at the very bottom, and these colors are going to give you a completely different look because all of the blends are working with that background color. I personally really enjoy running through all the background colors because it really gives me inspiration for new designs and different things that I can do with the one I'm working on. When you're willing to give things a try, it's amazing the new ideas that will come out of that. You've learned a lot of techniques in this class and I hope that you can take this into your own art work and use blending modes and textures to create some really beautiful pieces on the iPad. In the next video, I'm going to show you what's coming up in the next class.
13. What's Next: Once you've had a chance to play, experiment and practice with all these techniques that we've learned today, you may say what's next, and I say, let's take it up to the next level. In the third part of this series, I'm going to show you all my tips and tricks on how to make your art appear like it's literally jumping off the page. I'll show you how I create shadows and how we use those shadows with the layers in the blend modes to make our textures and our outlines look three-dimensional. We'll explore how we can do multiple ideas using just one design. Once we get the design to pop, I'll show you ways to make the entire design rise up off the page. We'll explore techniques in this next class that help us give the look of an embossed design as well as one of an engraved design and we'll play around with the look of a design that's made up of puzzle pieces lying on a table. We'll have fun playing with different ways to trick the eye into making it think your drawing is a three-dimensional piece of art. So once you feel that you have this class under your belt and you feel comfortable with the techniques, join me in the next one where we take simple liner designs and turn them into three-dimensional textured paintings. I'm really looking forward to sharing my techniques with you. It's fun to see how everybody uses them, it's fun to see what ideas you can come up with. So in the meantime, get practicing with those blend modes and those layers, and start creating your own textures. I'm really looking forward to seeing the beautiful designs you've come up with. Thank you for joining me in this course today, and we'll see you in the next one.
Jane Snedden Peever, Living the Creative Life
