Transcripts
1. Introduction : [MUSIC] In this class, I'm going to show you how I make a painting in
gouache and turn it into a digital file which can then be used as a greeting card. Have you been making
art for years and have a pile of paintings that you'd like to turn
into something, maybe a greeting card,
or an art print, or a design you could print
on a mug or a tea towel. I'm Kate Cooke, artist, illustrator and top teacher
here on Skillshare. I'm based in the UK, and for years now I've worked in
various design roles. First as a textile designer
and now as an illustrator. My work has ended up on
a variety of products. Everything from
dresses to cake tins, book covers to tea towels. This class is for everyone
who wants to learn the process of turning
artwork into a design. You will learn how I make my design decisions on
color and subject matter, and how I decide on
a layout that will work for the product
I'm designing for. I'm going to show you how I mix my paint and why I like using gouache as opposed to other paints that might
work so well for printing. I'll give you my tips for
scanning in your painting, opening it in Photoshop so
that you can clean it up, resize it, and turn it
into a digital file. By the end of the class, you should feel confident
enough to take your own work to the next level and turn
it into something amazing. By completing the class project, you'll have the class
skills to design and create your own painting. This class is for you if you've
had enough experience and confidence with art to get painting and you have a
set of gouache paints, a few brushes, and some paper, and a laptop or PC
with Photoshop. I've done a few
Skillshare classes on painting with gouache. If you are a complete beginner, then try my class on
adventures in gouache first, so if you are confident to paint before you
tackle this one. I'll go over everything
again in this class too, so get your paints ready
and let's dive in. Next, we're going to talk
about the class project. See you in the next lesson.
2. The Class Project : [MUSIC] For your class project, I'd like you to design
a square greeting card. Find some pictures of flowers and leaves
that inspire you. Choose a color palette of around eight colors
that work together. Practice some paint exercises
in your sketchbook, turning these elements into stylized versions of
flowers and leaves. Draw out a square
layout for your design. Paint your design in gouache. Take your finished painting and scan it into your computer, and then open the scan design in Photoshop and go
through the process I show you to clean it up and
resize it ready for printing. You've now got a floral
design ready to go to the printers and be produced
as a greeting card. Once you've watched the class, you'll have all the tools and
advice you need to complete the project as I'll
have taken you step-by-step through
every aspect, sharing my tips for
designing a beautiful card. Don't forget to
share your design in the class project
section below. I love to see my
students' work and I'm always happy to give
feedback and advice. Now we're going to look at
what materials you will need. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC]
3. Materials : [MUSIC] For our painting, we're going to use
gouache paint, which is water-based and a great paint to make a
nice flat design with. I've used it for years
and there were lots of different brands you can use
and I've tried most of them. I have to say you get what
you pay for with gouache, so really is worth spending
a little more money. Winsor & Newton is the
one that I really love. What I would suggest you do is buy a set to
get you started. But if you don't want
to buy a full set, then I can suggest four tubes of paint that
can get you on your way. The first one I
want you to buy is permanent white, is
really important. You can get lots of
different shades with your paint if you
have permanent white. Then the other three colors
that I would say you can mix most things with are
spectrum yellow, intense blue, and flame red. I think you can
mix quite a lot of colors with those three paints. I think that would
get you well on the way to starting
with gouache. Now the paper we're going
to use is really important, you want a really good quality
thick cartridge paper. Smooth heavyweight paper
is the one you are after, and this one's by Daler Rowney. There are lots available, so just choose the
one that you can get and it's affordable to you. The weight is important, this is 220 GM or 135 pounds, and that will give you the
heavyweight thickness, which means your paper won't buckle when you put paint on it. This is an A3 pad, but we're going to, in this class, just
tear our paper in half and use it as an A4 size. Next, we're going to
talk about brushes. I've got three brushes here that we're going to
use for this class. They're all round brushes and the first one is a size six, it's quite a big brush and that's what I'm going
to use for mixing. This isn't a brand new brush, it's an old one because
you don't need to use your best brushes
for mixing paint. The other two brushes, I suggest you use
are a Number 4, which is good for larger areas, and a Number 2 or 1, which you can use
for the detail. There is a few more things you're going to use
for this class, one is possibly a palette. I tend to prefer one that's
got deep wells in it, and even better if you
can mix your paints in cup down plastic
cups or old yogurt pot. That way you can mix plenty
of paint and it stays wet and last the whole time that you're
doing your painting. If you want to cut
them down like that, you can store them
in a tupperware box, or if you mix plenty of paint in your palette and you
don't want it to dry out, you can put it in a plastic bag or a tupperware box as well. The other things you're
going to need is a big glass of water to
wash your brushes in, some tissue paper, a ruler, and maybe a set square as
well to draw out your square, and a pencil and an eraser. Finally, I'd like you
to have a sketchbook. I just like one
that's an A5 size, but you could have bigger. This one is by Fabriano, and it's a really nice
weight of paper in it. This one's a more skin one, and this one's by a UK
company called Pith, which ever you prefer to use, but I would suggest
you use one that's got a very good quality
heavyweight paper in it. You're also going
to need a method of scanning your artwork, a PC or laptop and
Photoshop installed on it. That's it, I think we're
ready to get started. Now we need to find some
flower and leaf inspiration. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC]
4. Finding Inspiration : Where do I find my inspiration for the flowers and leaves
that I want to paint? I've got lots of books, which I've always used, but these days I tend to prefer searching on the
Internet for ideas. I'm a big fan of Pinterest
and have lots of reference boards full
of different elements. This one is full of
flowers and leaves, so I'm going to
choose some to paint. I really like this iris, so I think my main flower is
going to be one of these. Then I'm just going to
choose some flower and leaf shapes that I
like the look of and use them as a guide for when I start practicing elements
in my sketchbook. I'm not too concerned about the colors of
the elements I'm choosing at this stage as I
just look for shapes I like. In the next lesson,
I'm going to show you how I decide on
my color palette, so that I get an interesting
balance of color and shade. See you in the next lesson.
5. A Colour Plan: [MUSIC] I've decided on the flowers and foliage
that I want to use, and now we need to
design a color palette. The way I choose
a color scheme is a fairly instinctive process. I have a Pinterest board where I collect color
schemes that I like, so I often refer
to that for ideas. I also look back at my previous paintings for color combinations
that work well. I sometimes play around in
my sketchbook with color, so it's always good to
have these sorts of things to hand when
making a plan. What I do try to do is
not use too many colors. I like to stick to around eight, and I want a good
variety in tone, from quite light to very dark to get a good contrast of shades. I'm going to leave
the background as the white of the paper. For this painting. I'm
going to use page in my sketchbook as
inspiration for my palette. I love the bold orange, pink, and turquoise, and I think
for the paler tones, I'll use mint, lemon yellow, leaf green, and a paler pink. I also want that darker
tone for painting the iris, so I'm going to mix
an indigo for that. I'll work through all
my colors that I want and test them on scraps
of cartridge paper. Remember when they dry, they tend to lighten slightly because of the chalky
nature of the paint. I mix my paint in cut-down
cups so that I can mix plenty. The consistency of
the paint is key. You're looking for a
double cream thickness. Now I've got my colors mixed. I'm going to trial some flowers and leaves in my sketchbook. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC]
6. Flower And Leaf Practice : [MUSIC] I've got some reference photos of flowers and foliage, and now I'm going to practice some paintings of them
in my sketchbook. I want to use the
photos for inspiration, rather than slavishly
copying the flowers in great detail as I intend to paint very
stylized versions of them. I am picking out some leaves, flower heads, buds that I
quite like the look of. I'm just going to paint
them in my sketchbook. I'm not too worried about using the exact colors that
they are in the photo. I just want to make it up and paint very simplified
versions of them, and I'm looking for patterns and colors working
well together. Once I've got enough ideas
painted out in my sketchbook, I want to think about the
layout of the painting. It's going to be
a greeting card, so I'll use a square. I think I want the flowers
and leaves to mostly be appearing to grow up
from the bottom edge, with a few coming in from other edges just to
give some balance. The background is
going to be white, but I might put in some stripes of color behind the flowers. However, I'm not going to paint them now as I can do this in Photoshop where I'll
be able to play around with it to see
what colors work. The next stage is just to
draw out and do the painting. So see you in the next lesson. [MUSIC]
7. Making The Painting : [MUSIC] First I'm going to draw out a square as the design is going to be for a
square greeting card. I'm just doing this with
a ruler and a set square, marking out my square, and then I'm going to
draw out my design. First of all, I'm going to
start out with the iris, and that is the central
part of my painting. I felt it's quite important
to put that in first, and then I'm going
to add in lots of smaller flowers and
leaves to surround it. Most of them are
going to be coming up from the bottom
of the painting. I want that to be
the densest area of flowers and foliage, but then I'm just going to work around the rest of the square and add a few leaves
here and there. Quite like that wibbly-wobbly
leaf down the bottom, I'm going to put some in
at the sides as well. At this stage, obviously, I don't really go into
any great detail with the drawing because it's all going to disappear
under the paint anyway. It's just a guide, so that's my drawing finished. The first thing I'm going to start with is that pale pink. I like to start with
the paler colors first, and I'm just going to do that big flower at the
top of the painting, initially in pink, leaving some of the areas
obviously in white. Although you can paint over
the gouache in layers, I always find it works better
if you leave some of it. The area is white and
I'm going in with yellow and I've got a few areas, especially in the
middle of that iris. Next, I've got the
pale blue and I'm just using that as a base
for some of the leaves and foliage that I'm using all the time
I'm referring back to my sketch book that's got all those practice paintings in. As you can see, I'm still
doing the pale blue. It's quite a good color to base other darker
colors on top of. I've moved on to the orange now, and I like the idea of doing an orange flower
over on the left. I'll go over all these
areas with more detail, but for the moment, I'm just working my way
around the painting and just using each color wherever
I think it might work. I'll come back to them
again and again, probably. That orange is quite
useful as an outline, and to get some of the details
on the inside of flowers, and again, I'm going to
use it for leaf here. You can see that I've left an area that I know
is another color. In fact, that's the iris, so it's going to be
in the dark indigo. Now, I've got that
lovely purple maroon, I'm not quite sure what you call it for the wibbly-wobbly leaf, and I'm going to use
it on top of the blue, and I'm just using one of
my smallest brushes to do dots and then the
blue is going in. I'm using that as
an outline as well. I'm just going to paint
in a leaf that's going to hide behind the
iris slightly, and I'm going to
use it to fill in these leaves for that
little pink flower. Notice the consistency, it's very thick and flat, so it's giving a good
cover, no streaks. Back to that pale pink again, and I'm going to use
it to do some lines across the orange
flower like that. It almost looks
slightly oriental, and I'm going to use
it for some dots as texture and decoration
in the leaves, and in some of those
little flower buds. Now for that minty green, I'll sure use that
to paint some of the leaves and another
leaf down the bottom, and it looks quite
nice to use it onto that blue just doing a stripe. I'm going to use it on that
pink flower at the top, I'm just using circles. An interesting mark and little crisscrosses
on the leaf there. So just mix up
your marks really. Try and find all different
ways of covering areas either with dots or
stripes or crosshatching. Now, I'm on to the really
dark color of the indigo, and I'm going to paint
in the iris now, and I'm using it to do the flower as well
as the leaves because I think that gives it quite
a more striking look. I will be going over the top of that with a bit more
detail in the blue, but for the moment, I'm just filling all the whole
area in with the indigo. I've left a bit of
some of the leaves, though I'm going to
use with the blue. I'm going to try and balance up that indigo in other places
around the painting, doing a few marks in
the pale blue again, so I'm really just
going backwards and forwards with all my colors, using them on top of each other, darks on top of lights, lights on top of darks. Some more stripes in that leaf and in the
leaf behind the iris. Now, I'm back with that blue, I'm going to use it to define some of these
flowers a bit better, and purple again
around the green. It looks quite nice
with the green, and with the orange. We'll add that little flower. Now with the blue I am outlining
pink flower at the top. And now I'm going to use it
for the detail in the iris, it works quite well on
top of that indigo. In fact, I'm going to
use it to paint in some of the petals,
the lighter petals. Just get a bit of detail and
texture into the flower, and then go back over with the
indigo on top of the blue. Just to make those marks and a little bit more interesting, and I'm going to put a blue flower at blue
leaf at the top. I think that works quite well, just balancing up
that Indigo a bit, putting it in a few other
places in the painting and some dots within the iris, I think that's about it. The painting is nice and flat and defined in its color areas. But in Photoshop,
I can make it even flatter and tidy it
up quite a bit too. Now, we're going to
turn the painting into a digital file. See you in the next lesson. [MUSIC]
8. Making It Digital : In this lesson, I'm going
to show you how I scan my painting into my PC
and open it in Photoshop. I'm using a fairly
standard printer scanner made by Epsilon. I'm scanning the
painting at 600 DPI so that I get a sharper
quality image because the resolution
is quite high. Once scanned, I put the image in a file on my computer
where I keep artwork. Next, I'm going to
open Photoshop, find the file and upload
it into my workspace. I'm going to create a new file, which is the size that I want my design to be
when it's printed. In this case, it's 15 centimeters by 15
centimeters greeting card, and I'll set the resolution to 300 which should be about
right for printing. I go back to the artwork
image and select the rectangle marquee tools
to surround the image. Press "Edit", "Copy", and then go back to my new file and press "Edit"' and "Paste". The image is too
big for the canvas, so I do Control T and scale it down to fit within
it and press "Enter". Now I have the image on one layer and the background
on the bottom layer. I want to get rid of the
background in the image, so that I can later
play around with some stripes of color
in the background. So I select the Magic Wand tool, making sure I'm on
the image layer. The tolerance is at 40, which should be about right anymore and it might take
too much of the painting away and I make sure that
the contiguous box is unchecked as I want it to only pick up the
white background. I click on the background
and it selects it, then I go to Edit and Cut. To check it worked, I
just turn off the eye on the background for a moment to see that it's done the job. Because some of the
selection tool took away the white in the flowers, I'm going to make
another layer underneath the image and use
the brush tool, select the white and fill
those areas back in. I wouldn't normally bother but I am going to play around
with the background data. Now, the design is already
for a bit of a cleanup. And I'm going to use
a few tools for this. I start with the eraser tool and I'm going to select
it and then zoom in, Control Z. I'm starting with the top-left corner
and just going around neatening up those edges
and getting rid of any marks that I can see that might show on the background. I've just work around quite methodically and clean
up the canvas until I'm happy that I've got
a nice neat line around everything and
there are no marks left. The next tool I'm going to use
is the spot healing brush. This is a really
useful tool if you want to tidy up the
paintwork and try to keep the same painterly feel
to the image as it has this amazing ability to
copy the surrounding area. Don't ask me how this
works it's just magic. It can't always deal with every mark as it can
get a bit confused, but anything it doesn't work on, I'll use the paintbrush
tool to sort. It's brilliant for just going
around and using on marks like brushstrokes
and things like that that are standing out a bit too much and just making
things blend in better. The paintbrush tool
is also really useful but unlike the
spot healing brush it has to be told what color to paint and it gives a
fairly flat digital look. This is fine for tidying, but I don't want to overuse it or I'll lose that painted look. It would just look like an image I've created
in Photoshop. I'm going to use it to do
the last bit of tidying and make sure some of
the edges are more solid like the pale pink, which are lost a bit in
the selection process. It's all finished
now the tiding and the final stage is to try some different colored
stripes in the background. I could just change the color
of the whole background, but I think I want to
leave some a bit white and use some tones I've used
in the design as stripes. I'm going to create
another layer for each stripe and make sure they're on top
of the background but underneath the artwork. I'm trying the mid-blue first I draw lines
across the image with the paintbrush
tool and then fill in the space using the
paint bucket tool. It's quite a bold
blue and as it's the same tone as
the outline of the [inaudible] that a bit, so I'll try the pale
turquoise instead. I'm going to draw
another stripe, this one is in the pale pink. I think the tone
might be too similar. I'll leave it for
the moment and put a third stripe in at the
bottom of the design and I'm using the
indigo that I used for the iris for this. I don't think I like
that pale turquoise now, so I'll change that to a slightly paler version
of the mid blue. I seem to have lost the
iris stalk now so I'm going back to the image layer using the paintbrush
tool and the mid blue, I'm just going to paint in
the outline for the stalk. I'm also going to fill
that pink stripe again as I didn't quite hit
the edge with it. Now, I've lost the pink
outline of the leaf, so I'll lighten the
pink stripe a bit too. As you can see, it's a case
of playing around with the background colors until you hit on something you like. Because the stripes are
on different layers, I can also play around with the position and
the angle of them. Once I'm happy with it, I'm going to save it as a Photoshop file as
well as a JPEG file. This means I have a file I can go back to and change
things and if I need and the JPEG file is the one that I'll
send to the printer. Now, we're going to
take a look at what we've covered and how you can turn your own artwork
into a greeting card. See you in the final lesson. [MUSIC]
9. Final Thoughts : [MUSIC] We've produced a beautiful piece of artwork ready to print
as a greeting card. I've shown you all the
materials you need to do this and the ways in which I find
inspiration for the design, color scheme, and the
layout of the painting. We've done some flower
and leaf practice to get our ideas flowing and then painted out the
design and gouache. I've shown you my
process for scanning and digitizing my artwork
so it's print ready. I'd love you to do the
class project now and produce your own artwork
for a greeting card. There are so many
companies out there on the web that you can just upload your design to their
site and they'll print your cards for
you and send them back plus the envelopes so
you're all set to send your own unique and
personalized greeting cards. I've added some of
the ones I like to use in the UK in
the class notes, but wherever you live, I'm sure you'll find some
great online print companies to turn your artwork into
something really special. I hope by following this class, you've realized how
easy and affordable it is to design your
own greeting card. You'll never want to purchase a shop book card ever again. Thanks for taking the
class, and please, don't forget to upload your
class project to the gallery. I can't wait to see
what you can create. Until next time, happy painting. [MUSIC]
Kate Cooke, Textile Designer and Illustrator
