Transcripts
1. Introduction: I love working
with paper because it's really immediate
way to create something. I just loved tactility of it. The fact that you're working
with shapes in your hands. You're layering things
that can put on a podcast. You can put an audio book
and just lose yourself in whatever you're making and come out with something
amazing event. Hi everyone and
welcome to this class. My name is Laura and I think
artist and illustrator. My style involves a lot of
color and a lot of character. I don't make cord, but it
takes itself too seriously. So today's class is
all about paper out. And we're going to be
making a vignette of a scene from your imagination with lots of different details, but the main focus
is the character. So in this course
we're going to cover the basic techniques
and paper craft I'm building a color
scheme to work with and then going to look at
making that character, building a world around it. And in the end you'll come out with something
that is a piece of art as much as is
just bits of paper. I want to stress
that this class is really accessible
and easy to get on with his going to
take you a while to really find confidence
in working this way. But this is a starting
point for this class. You're going to need
a pair of scissors, a stack of paper, and some
glue to start off with. So I'm really excited
to teach this class T and show you a new way of
working with paper in a way that uses color layers to
bring lots of personality, story, and joy into the
pieces that you're making. I look forward to what
we'll make together.
2. The Potential of Paper: Hi guys, Welcome back. I'm so excited that you've says, take this course and I'm looking forward to getting started. So as we get started with pay for arts
and paper crafting, I want to think a bit about
the different way of working, the differences between this and drawing and all sorts
of other art forms. And for me, one thing that really stood
out when I was getting started was going
to an exhibition of Matisse's paper cutouts. And he was well-known
for being a painter, but in his later life he
tend to paper cutting. So my T7 a letter, it is no longer the brush that slips in size over the canvas. It is the scissors that cut into the paper and
enter the color. The conditions of the
journey, or 100% different. The contour, the figure
springs from the discovery of the scissors that give it the movement of
circulating life. This tool doesn't modulate, it, doesn't brush on it in sizes
in underlying this well, because the criteria of
observation will be different. I just think that says so well about how different is to
work with a pair of scissors. You have to be really sure that you're going into
the paper cut with confidence and
cotinine that you're going to cut a shape that
we can go back to later. You can go back
and eating it up, but you have to just go
for it that first time. I don't tend to
pencil thing out. I just enjoy that kind of way of working
where you're just being confident and
you're just cutting shapes and seeing how
they fit together. So paper out is sometimes
considered quite crafty, quiet, childish in some ways I remember going to a
family get together and my aunty asked me How am I cutting and
sticking was going. But it's so much more than
cutting and sticking. There is so much kind of
intricacy within that work. And there are so many paid
for artists who work in such intricate ways or in
such different ways as well. If you give any
artist as you paper, they will do something
different with it. And they all have their ways of molding and shaping it to
be what they want it to be. So paper art can be used for all sorts
of different things. I learned a lot of
people who use it for advertising
because it tends to bring out a product if you have a physical product in the
middle surrounded by paper, or it can really
bring it to life. But you can also use
it for many things. In books and magazines. Any kind of format that
needs an illustration. I think paper art can be a
really good avenue for that. Can bring all these
different layers to a piece that may be a drawing or a digital piece doesn't have the same effect. And I think when you make
something out of paper, you do have that depth that you don't get
with a flat image, even when it's printed, you can feel it jumping off the page if you get the
shadows just right. I really loved that element
of working this way. This class is going to be
well-suited to really anybody. So if you've tried
working with paper before and you feel
really confident in that, hopefully this will be a new way for you to work with
paper and figure out some different techniques that if you've never
worked with paper before, this will also be
perfect for you because it's a simple skill
working with scissors. I'm going to show
you exactly how to start from the basics. So just building up shapes. And if you're intimidated
by the level of detail or the idea of
making a whole scene, then we're just going to start from the background
and build it up. I'd really encourage you to take this way of working
and make it your own. Find you're in visual language, find your own style that suits you and suits
your interests, and take this up
to another level. So today we're going to
work on a paper cut scene. We're gonna be making a vignette with a character
and a background, and lots of details within this scene can be whatever
you want it to be. I'm gonna be making
a scene that's based on an nostalgic memory. And I'm going to build on
characters that are related to the people around me
and things that are familiar to me and things
that are inspiring to me. But it might be
something completely different than inspires you to build up a
scene in your head. And we're going to work
on it together and figure out all the intricacies
of that and pull it together to make something that has
really bright and fun and true to yourself. In this class, we're
going to start off with the basic techniques
and then we're going to move into a bit
of color play. We're going to play
around with the colors and have fun with that. Once we kinda warmed up to using scissors and using
different sheets of paper, we're then going to plan out our scene and get going with it. So we're going to planet work
on the background first. Then we're going to play
a bit with the character, figure out how
that's going to look and figure out how to get the
most out of that character. And then once all of that is created when to put it together, assembly or very neatly with glue and our
different layers, filling it all up and
finishing off our scene. And then I'm going
to show you how to photograph it so
you can share it with friends and family and put out into the world as your
new piece of artwork. And don't forget that
you can also share what you've made with the
rest of us and upload it in the project gallery and share with the world
what you've created. I would absolutely love to
see you wherever you've made and see how you're getting
on along the way as well. So join me in the next lesson
and we'll walk through the basic techniques of
paper art as we get started.
3. Tools & Materials: So some of the tools that
you're going to need for this class are you, first of all need a
pair of scissors? I use these ones
that are by a brand called viscous who finished. And they are the
needlework scissors. So they've got a really
good point at the end. And they're quite nice and compact and they're
really easy to control. And then particularly
sharp, which I like. But when I started off
with pay pressing, I was using this pair
of scissors which I think were 89 pence.
They were so cheap. Jeremy quite well
for a long time. So you don't need to be
too picky about this. Is that E is just something
that you feel like you can control and something that is particularly sharp is handy. You also have the option
of using a knife. It might be easier for you to control for different
shapes and things. I just prefer
scissors because you get a cleaner cut with a knife, you kind of get a little raised edge on the
edge of your pieces. It's not very obvious, and let's pay for artists
will use a knife. This one is by a band
called XL blades. I've used it so much that
you can't tell anymore. This is just a standard knife. There's also another brand
called swan and Morton, who are quite famous for making
craft knives or scalpels. And this one you can replace the bleed which you need
to do quite frequently. So by some spare bleeds, if you're using a knife, you're going to
need one of these. You're going to
need a custom map, any kind of cutting
mat at something that's self-healing
so you don't get those bumps over it when you're using it, that is really handy. Sometimes the paper selection, you want to be finding a whole stack of
paper to choose from. You want to be looking for nice papers that are
brightly colored and around 120 GSM to 150 GSM, which is the grams
per square meter. And that is the
thickness of the paper. That thickness is a lovely
thickness to cut with. If you go anything that's too thick on the side of the card, then you're going to have
trouble cutting in your hands. It's going to look
a bit messy in a bit rough around the edges. So your local craft shops should have a good
paper selection. Some of the brands which
I really liked to use, our G F Smith, which is a UK based paper brand, Maya paper, which some of these are from a
couple of others, Canson and can fit. But anything that your
craft shop has you can use and you can even
recycle various things. So I sometimes just use nice colored envelopes
or wherever I can find if it's a nice color that I'll cut it off and
use it in a project. So you're going to need some
glue as well as this one. And it's called
high-tech or purpose. So this is why I
use all the time. It's really good for paper because it holds
it really strong. And you don't need
a lot of it at all. You need a tiny pinprick of it. So hopefully that
this fine, which is called a neat as tacky glue, which I think is
a US based brand, as well as an option for
sticking things together. You could get some
double-sided tape or some sticky foam pads. I'll show you at the end of
this project how to use them, but they are optional and an optional extra if you want to add a bit of texture
to your pieces, is using some paints. So I often use gouache
paint just to add details like eyes or mouth or any kind of texture
on their cheeks. So if it's a person
or sort of texture on the hair texture on
clothes, patterns as well. You can paint with gouache paint and it comes up really nicely. If you're doing that, you'll
probably needs a white, a black, and a red at the very least for what
we're making today. But if you don't want
to bother with that, we can use paper all the way
and that works just as well.
4. Basic Techniques: Hi guys, Welcome back. I'm gonna be showing
you a few of the basic techniques
for paper cutting. In this lesson, we're going
to start with your scissors. Whatever paresis
is you're using. I really want you to focus your paper in the middle
of the V of the scissors. So note where they overlap. You want materially
sharps so you can bias as the sharpness or
you can just buy any viruses is, they
should be quite sharp. And with that, you
should note that the paper should do more
moving than the scissors. You should be quite still
with this is in your hand, but moving the paper to guide it into the
shape that you want. So if I'm discussing
a wiggly line here, I'm going to need
to shuffle method. So this is a long, quite often. But you'll see the paper
is moving my hand. This is a really rough shape. But the beauty of
working with papers, you can go back and
need some things up. So at this point I'm just going to round off those edges that
are not very happy with. This isn't meant to
be needed at all. This is just a practice, so just cut a random
shape to begin with and practice, neaten it up. So likewise, if
you're using a knife, he wants to get up, get your
paper on your cutting mat. Use a nice sharp blade
is quite similar. You just want to practice gently taking the knife into the paper, getting the right pressure. It takes a bit of time
to figure out most of these my knife for
cutting straight lines. So in any sort of piece
I'm making, if any, is a straight line and my
knife comes in and that point, I will cut every other shape out with messages more or less. So for that you're going
to need a metal ruler. I've got very small one here, but you can get
bigger ones and just spend some time practicing
cutting a straight line. It's very simple. You just have to make sure that you're lining up perfectly. It can be really helpful
at this point to have a cutting mat
with squares on. So if you're trying
to get a good right angle or something, you have that not
to practice from. I have always used pins for applying my glue to
the end of a paintbrush, which can also be a
good thing, right? Even you use a
triangle of paper, but that tended to get
quite Louis after awhile, found the pins work really well. You only need a
teeny tiny amount, so I've just got a small
dot on the end of my pen. You just need to dot
that on the back of your shape really neatly. Don't use a lot because otherwise it will
come off at the side. You can even like brush a little bit of it off if
you think you've got too much or sometimes I dab it on the back of my hand to
get any excess off. And then you can just
stick it down like that. I tend to guide the
piece of paper down to the paper on the pin as a way to not get your fingers
in the way when you're making something as well, clean off the end of your pen. And if you've got any
glue on the edge, you can just run it
along there and it will pick up any excess glue. This is quite a large shapes, so you probably just want
to dot the small bit along the edge of each
bit of the shape. You can dot it and then
pull it along as well. That will stick it nicely to
what you're sticking it to. It's always better to use
too little and too much. You don't want to overdo it. If you've got an edge that
is maybe sticking up a bit, you can always go in with some more glue rather than sticking it down
originally with too much, you can just go in like that
and stick the edge down. If you do have a sort
of glue ear problem, if there's a bit of a mess, you can get a wet paint
brush and just lightly brush along any kind of gluey
surface to get rid of it, but don't do that too much. Otherwise, you're
upset the fibers of the paper and it will end
up tearing a little bit. So a nice way to add texture, which is completely optional, is using a bit of gouache
paint for Girish pain. You want to watch it
down just a little bit onto the paper smoothly. What's quite nice is just to directly paint onto the paper, let it dry and then cut it out. That's the thing I tend to do. Here. I'm just doing
some rough lines. I'll show you a finished
piece which is quite handy. This little old man. I've used quite a lot
of painted details. So in his face you can see
his eyes and his mouth. And I've added a bit
of color on his face. He's got a little bit of color to his cheeks and
its nose in his ear. And then on his
turtleneck jumper that he's got these sort
of lines that I've just cut out from painting onto a piece of paper with
gouache paint as well. You can see in his
jeans and his shoes, details that I've
been uncouth paint. Little features like
this are really nice to add in there,
not necessarily toy. You can totally do
things just with paper. So now it's your turn. If you grab a sheet of paper
and start cutting out, just start playing around. Try some wiggly lines
and straight lines, either with your knife
or with your scissors. You can try cutting out a circle and then going and neaten up. Circles are notoriously hard. So don't worry if it takes
you for you guys to get it right with the
shapes you've got. If you stick them down, figure out the glue
that you need to figure out how to apply
it neatly with the pin. And then you can
play around a bit with textures, with some paint. If you'd only use paint,
you can also use pencils. You can do whatever you like. Just experiment with
one sheet of paper. So we're not wasting a lot. But try some of these techniques out just so you're
warming up to them. Sometimes you've got to grips with these basic techniques. I will see you in the next
lesson where we'll be figuring out one of my
favorite parts of any project, which is the color schemes. So I will see you there.
5. Choose Your Colors: Welcome to this next lesson. We're gonna be looking
a little bit of color, which is one of my favorite
parts of any project. Just figuring out
a color scheme, figuring out how
it can really lift your illustration and bring
something fresh to it. Working okay for is actually sometimes easier than
I can digitally in terms of color because you are limited to a few
different colors. Whereas if you're
working digitally, you have the whole
spectrum to choose from, which might seem
like good thing, but you're going to get
stuck fiddling around with different colors
and being really picky. Whereas with paper,
you just have what's in front of you and you can see it in front of you. You can lay up
next to each other and figure out what
works well together. So what I tend to do when
you've lost your paper, just to cut out a small
square from each corner of each sheets and
gather them all up. You can lay them
all out and figure out which ones work
well together. Figured out the ones
that are trying to get the right kind
of message across. And by that I mean, what sort of vibe do you want your
illustration to put across? Do you want it to
be fun and cozy? Warm joints be slightly
cooler or slightly moodier. Whatever you're looking for, you're kind of have
this whole scheme of colors in front of
you to choose from. And I ended up making
a swatch like this, or a group of swatches, which will give me something to relate back to when
I'm making my piece. So I can kinda see
that these colors are working together for I'm after. So I wanted something
kind of summaries, something that was bright and
had a good range of colors. So I would say that you need to focus on five main
bright colors. So here I've just
gone with this red, this mustard, yellow, There's really bright green and orange and a sort of
lime green as well. You want to find those
really bright colors to set your color scheme off. You want them to match well, but you can also have
some slightly caching. So I would say some
of these don't necessarily go
together super well, maybe the yellow and the
green Cash slightly, but that's quite nice. Clash. Another example of
that would maybe be like a corollary pink with
the green or something. So once you've figured
out your bright, so you can then figure out
a couple of muted options. So this is a slightly lighter
version of that orange. You've got a slightly lighter
version of that green. So I've got an eyes
cornflower blue, and then I've got some more
sort of turquoise colors. I really love working with
these three in particular, the kind of minty green as well. Then some light pinks. You want some sort of neutral
tones which are really helpful for highlights for
each they need a white tone. I've gone with sort
of an off-white tone. If you've got a character
you want something for their skin tone or
the hair color. So going for some
neutral colors here, I really tend to not use
black and my pieces. It's just a personal preference. You're more than
welcome to use black. But I tend to find
that dark color. There is dark but
it's not black. So for this one I've gone
with a called Claret, the color paper, but it said
maroon color is very dark, but it is slightly per
police like slightly read. Another one I use quite
often is a sort of, I've got this other
color palette here, navy blue, which is really nice. This color palette, It's
actually quite handy to show you some of the different
papers you can use. So sometimes I throw in a bit
of a colored tracing paper, or I will sometimes go and paint a piece of paper to get
the color that I want. If you're struggling
to find inspiration for your color schemes, you
just need to look around. You can figure out color schemes based on anything
that you come across. A nature, walk to work, the clothes in your wardrobe, the stuff in your home, everything has colors that work together and
don't work together. And you can just be
noticing these things, even packaging and supermarkets,
that sort of thing. Just find inspiration
from around you instead of going online
looking at other artists, stealing their color schemes, which I know is very tempting
and I have taught myself. But sometimes it's
just better to look around you and
figure out something that works for yourself that is a really pure form
of inspiration. So in order to have
a bit of a play around with the colors
that we've chosen. I'm going to ask you to make a sort of abstract compositions. We're going to cut lots
of different shapes out from the colors
that we have, see how they work
alongside each other. You can also practice your
cutting skills at this point. Get used to cutting those shapes really
nice and smoothly, and just assemble them in
a nice abstract pattern. It doesn't have to be neat.
It can just be a bit of fun. And I want you to see our
colors are working together. So here's what I came
up with with some of these colors
from my swatches. But I love seeing how they
all work together when they're not all laid out,
regimental like this. So it's a bit more fun. It's got a bit more
movement to it. I hope you enjoyed
this little activity and I look forward to seeing
you in the next lesson, which is all about
setting our scene and figuring out what
we're going to illustrate.
6. Sketch Your Scene: Hi guys. Now we're going to be planning out the scene
that we're going to make. We're going to figure out the background and start cutting that one tip I would give you if you're really struggling to
figure out what to make, you can base your
illustration on a past memory or something around you in
your day-to-day life. Because then you're basing it on things that you really
know for yourself. In your mind. You're not basing that on
too much reference material. It's true to you, it's nostalgic to you. And that will make it more
successful because it will be something that is from your world and not
somebody else's. So the first part of
setting your scene, it's important to just get
a sketch down on the page. You might find sketching
is not your thing. You might feel like
it's a bit of a drag. It is helpful to just plan out
where things are gonna go, how big things are gonna be. Nowadays, I normally sketch
on my iPad just because it's a bit easier to get all the colors
in the right place. I know my color, my sketch
after I've drawn it out. But that is mainly just so I can see how things are heading. And especially if it's
for somebody else, I can send them
that and show them. Okay, here's how the
colors are going to look. But first project,
I'm just going to sketch in my
sketchbook because we just want something
that is a bit rough that is going to show
us where we're heading. And we don't need to worry too much about our colors because we can be a bit more
experimental and figure out where they're
gonna go as we go along. Okay, so I'm gonna get started
on sketching my scene. And I'm going to stick
to a rectangle is roughly seven inches
by nine inches just because I've got
a frame ready to go and I want it to
fit nicely in there. So you can do it in
any shape you like. You can be in a
square, rectangle, circle wherever you like. It's good to have
something that you're basing your peace within. And sometimes it's
nice to find a frame at the start so you knew what you're aiming
for at the end. So normally I start
by drawing out my character is just
because I want them to be the main focus of the piece. So I'm going to make
something that is inspired by some holiday. My family holidays weren't
particularly glamorous, but we would always
have ice cream. So I'm gonna make a little
scene with an ice cream shop. It could be honestly, it could be anywhere really. I'm going to make it
more sort of imagined. I don't want it to be specific to a place because then I'll get stuck looking at images of Italy and I just
want to go to Italy. We're going to just draw
the character first, which is gonna be based on me as a child, I'm drawing with pen. I got taught in school how strong pen and I
just always have done but joy pencil
drawing with crayons, whatever you like really. And also you can hopefully
see it a bit clearer. I've been illustrating kids and characters for a long time. So I've got a bit of confidence with the way
that I draw things. But you might not feel that. You might feel intimidated
by just drawing a face. In particular, they're quiet, scary to get going with. So if it helps, you can just draw a
very basic shapes. Just draw instead of a face, draw a circle,
instead of a body. Throw a stick like it is just to plan out where
things are gonna go. So don't be too
precious about it really going to give
her some sunglasses and kids have big heads
and little bodies. So I'm going to give her little friend who's just going to be the
small sausage dog. I would just
encourage you to find your style with your drawing. You don't need to be basing
it off anybody else's. You don't need to be
doing it like this. You can really find your own visual language
and urine voice. Okay, so those two in the
picture now I'm going to flesh out a little bit more with some sort
of background. So I'm going to have a
sort of archery down here. And then I want them
to be coming out of this ice cream shop. So that's going to be down
here with lots of ice cream, a Sharpie, details
in the window. For your backgrounds,
you want as many different colors
going on as possible. You want to have
lots of things to draw the eye to different parts. For instance, I'm going to
just put some steps in here, a bit of a floor. This bit is going
to draw the eye out to this peachy scene. And there's gonna be lots
of colors going on in here. So that'll be a really nice area for to add some interest to
this background because I could just make this
all a wall and that just wouldn't be very exciting. I wouldn't draw the eye to
anything at all really. So yeah, just add interests
in different ways. It could be through windows, that could be through
arteries like this. Or if you want to play
around with perspective, that's a whole other thing, but please just feel free to
go for it and experiment. And then it's just a case of
adding lots of details into the shop so they can
be rough for now, I'm just going to draw a
sort of table for people to come to at the
beginning of the shop. And then this can be where
all that ice cream is. I'm going to fill that out more when I start to cut it really, I think that's the joy of
this bit is that you've got the basics and you
can just fill up the rest with whatever you like. And that can come quite
naturally when you're making. You don't have to plan this
out in advance really. This is my finished sketch
is really rough and I want to encourage you that that
is okay, that's good. We're just making
a rough sketch to figure out where
things are gonna go. It doesn't have to be
neat in any way because the neatness is going to come
when we do the paper stuff. And that's the
point where you can really get bogged
down in the neatness. Whereas here we're just
trying to get started, get something that is going to lead us on to the next stage. So just have a play around
with a few compositions. If you're struggling
with this scale, try and do them as
tiny thumbnails, try and just draw them out and see where things
are gonna go. And then you can maybe
draw something that is a bit more to the scale that
you're going to work. And you're welcome to
work at any scale, you don't have to work. This baby. You can do it
as big as you like really. I just love making
small details, so I'm gonna make it this size. So once we've got
our sketch sorted, we're going to bring
our colors back in. So I planned out these colors. And I'm just going to
have a little think about where they could go
within this sketch. Once I've figured that out, it might be helpful
for you to do a digital sketch and
put the colors in. But if you don't have
time to do that, just have a little think
about where the colors could go and what colors would work
well for different pieces. So as an example of how your digital sketch
could look if you decide to do one and
add all your colors. Here's a printout
of one, dahlia, which is still a rough
sketch, still quite quick, but I've just taken time to add all the
colors in because I really wanted to
see how this was going to work for this lesson. Let's just an idea of
how colors can balance. How I've used the same
colors throughout. So there are pinks and
pinks here and here, but also the same blues
come into the shop. So you want everything
to be cohesive, but you want lots of color
and lots of variety. And once we figured that out, we're going to get
onto our background, which will be the first thing that we're going to cut out.
7. Create Your Background: In this lesson,
we're going to start with the background and make some of these shapes and
put the objects together. I'm going to base my background on this
piece of mount board. You could use paper or card. But I quite like the depth
that you get with mount board. It's a little bit raised up, so I'm just going to
use this as my base, so I'm not cutting out
huge pieces of paper. I'm going to save my
paper in that sense. So for example, I've
already cut out that top of the scene and that's
going to go just there. I'll add a bit of
detail into that later. The same with the stuff
behind the archway. I've just cut out
a piece for there. Now. I'm going to cut out
the archway and show you That's going to go and how to add a little
bit of detail to that. I'm just measuring things up
just to see that I've got the right size of paper to
work with. Can go with. This is why it's helpful to
have a sketch because you can sometimes kinda line
things up quite nicely. So I'm just going to make a small neck in the paper
where I need to aim for. So that's why the
arch is going to go. I'm going to get these
out of the way so they don't get cut because
I'm going to use my ruler and my knife
just for this little bit. I've got a sort of
straight dish line. I have to be too
accurate with things. You can just use your
eyes and go for it. Especially with straight lines. Sometimes your eye
is more reliable. Lining things up and give myself a bit of
space to work with. So it's easier to cut
too much paper and then go into things instead
of cutting too little because you can't
go anywhere from there. I'm just going to go for
it and cut the archway. This might take you a couple of times to get something
like this, right? But his message just give it a try and get
a feel for things. You can always cut things again, doesn't have to be
right the first time. This bit here is not
particularly straight, so I'm just gonna
go with my knife and straighten that
up a little bit. But I've got a nice curve
here and I'm happy with that. Okay. So you've got part of
the archway there. I'm just going to go back
in with another bit of that same color and add a
little bit of this detail. So just this kind
of extra bit of the archway just so it's not
just one piece of paper. I quite like layering
things up that way. So for this, I
think I'm going to stick it down first and
then go and cut it. And we can just always be kinda worried that you want to save as much paper as possible. So just stick things
kinda close to the edges. So I'm just going to
cut straight down space to work with. I think that's also
good tip is if you've got a huge sheet of paper and you're trying to cut
and it's quite tricky, so maybe just cut things down. So you've got less
area to work with. So here, I'm just going
to cut along this bit. This is a bit
tricky because kind of curved edges are always
a bit tricky to nail down. So just take it really slowly. You can always go
back in afterwards, but I'm just going to guide
the paper through my scissors really carefully
to get it on edge. Because this last
bit is straight. I'm just going to come in and my ruler and finished
the last bit off with my knife because it will
be quicker and stricter. You've just got your actually, which now has a little
bit more depth to it. It's very subtle from there, I'm going to add in the
details of this shop. I'm going to bring
back in my mount board for the background and the
rest of the bits of the scene. So I'm just going to line up things and see how
they're looking. So we've got this here. This is gonna be my shop here. And I cut this out earlier for this piece which is gonna be, can't really see it
in this printout, but it's gonna be a
sort of shadow on the wall from the door. And I've used the same paper, but I've painted it
very slightly darker. So that will work really
nicely to just give a bit of depth to that piece
in the composition. And then the door
will go over the top. So I've started off this canopy for
the ice cream shop and have layered these. These are all different
small rectangles like this. I'm just going to
show you the last two so we can finish
it off together. So I've just got these
rectangles and I'm going to round off the edges
with my scissors. Doesn't have to be exactly
the same as the other one. I want them to look illustrated. I don't want them to
look too stiff of glue to these bits
down, but some others, I'm just saving for
the end for the cell, we can assemble it altogether. It's quite helpful to just have everything in pieces
so you can kind of mix and match and measure
things up to each other. So I'm going on a thing that's
got a pattern or a detail. So for example, that
archway or these stripes. So I use this rectangle at the back to it to
stick these altogether. So that's not going to be seen. But it's just a nice way to get things all
in a neat line. And now that I've
stuck them all down, I can go from behind and
just trim along this edge. I'm going to measure it
back up to my sketch. And that's looking good. The last bit of this
background will be the steps and the floor. And I've added a bit
of detail in here. You can see I might go
back and add some more. That's my background that's
coming together nicely. So I haven't stuck
too many bits down. But I stuck any of
the things that are important for all these
pieces to be kept together. I've stopped those for now. And we're going to assemble
it all at the end. Just have a play around
with these shapes. They can be overlapping, they can be over the edge. It doesn't really matter. I'm going to trim it all nicely, stick it all
together at the end. But for now I'm happy that we've got the basics are sorted. So now it's your turn. Start cutting out
the big shapes, start lining them up. Don't be too precious
about having them all sorted at this stage, we're just getting things
together and getting started. So I would really
encourage you to just go for it and
see what happens. Once you've done that,
you can join me in the next lesson and we'll
be building our characters, which will be the main
focus of our pieces.
8. Build Your Character: Hi guys, welcome back. In this lesson, we're
going to be looking at characters and how to build
a character successful. So my journey with making characters has been
quite a long journey. I've been trying to
figure it out for a long time and I think
I'm still figuring it out. It takes quite a
lot of practice to get the character is looking the way you
want them to look. It's not really about
simple features like their eyes and their
mouths usually stay the same. It's the shape of their face and that's the shape
of their nose. What shape is their hair? What are they wearing? Things like that can really
bring out a character. And I would just encourage
you to take inspiration from those around you and to see the different ways in which
they are formed and to work that into your
illustrations based sketching, be playing around with the paper until you find
something that really suits you and something that really suits the characters
that you're making. So if we're going back to
my sketch from earlier on, I've created this character
is based on me as a child. It's not really how
it looked as a child, but it's got my
hair and it's got some clothes I would
probably wear. But I want you to notice that
it's already simplified. So we've got the proportions
are right for a child. So the head is quite big
and the body is smaller and not as tall as
an adult, obviously. But we're not trying
to make something that is anatomically right. We're not trying to get
everything in the right place. We've simplified
things like the hands, the legs are very triangular. So I really want you to play around with that
and have fun with the proportions
and figure out how things might look
a bit different if you're illustrating
something versus drawing something on
atomically write, figure out the things that are important to
your characters. So for me it was
what she's wearing, the hat and sunglasses, and what she's doing as well
as to striding along in his way and holding an ice
cream, scoops of ice cream. So just go for it and have
a bit of fun with that when you're trying to figure out what your character is
going to look like. So starting to cut
out my character, I'm using the soap,
nice peachy color. I'm just going to cut
a small bit of this is really tricky
thing to cut straight away and get it right the
first time. I'll be honest. I work upside down, start with the forehead. So I'm just going to pretend for now she doesn't
have any hair, going to cut the forehead. And for children they have a very pronounced forehead
and a button, he knows. And that's the way, that's the way I illustrate
them anyway, if we're going for
more of an adult face, they may be more pointy, maybe a bit more defined. Children have very round faces. So that's just kinda
what I'm gonna, what I'm going to go for
casting and just to get the nose shape and then
going down for the chain. The chain is something I
always kinda come back to you. I tend to just cut it the
first time and it's way too big or too pointy, whatever. But I just curl it round
into more of a circle shape. Then I'm not being
too neat here, I'm just cutting the air and doing that as
a small circle. It might come back and make
that a bit smaller later. And then coming back
around hairline, but we're gonna come back to
that later as well. Okay. So that's the basic face shape, but it's not very good. I'm not, I'm feeling
like it's not, it's not got the right
sort of characters. So I'm gonna go back and
needing some things up. And at this point, I'm not adding any
features or anything. I'm just cutting
the face shape and the features that sometimes the bit where things go wrong. So I will draw or
paint an eye on the top and sometimes
it takes fingers, but once you've got your
basic sort of face shape, you can easily go
and cut it again. Some kind of happy with
how this is heading. Now, you need to use your imagination a bit to
kind of think about what it's gonna look like with eyes and with her and
that sort of thing. So just stick with it as it is because we're going to add
in some features to this. I am using pink for my features, but if you want to use pencil or even cut some very small bits of paper out for the features. You're welcome to
do that as well. I just quite like the way that the garage paint works
on top of the paper. And it gives you a bit more of a delicate feature when
you work with it that way. So I'm just going
to make a sort of gray color because I don't want it to be
really dark black. Test your paint out
on a little sheet of paper before you go ahead. Okay. I'm gonna go for
the eyes sharp looks, so I'm just gonna do
a little U-shape. I'm just kind of figuring
out where it's gonna go. Okay, Scott bombard lives. That's good. I'm just going to go
back in and neaten up and add a bit more to it. The mouse, I'm just going to
do that with a little bit of pink and white. Again, just going
in really carefully and try drawing the mouth. Okay, so for the hair
of the character, I'm just going to
add it in behind, which doesn't feel like
it naturally makes sense. Probably naturally
you would think to add the hair right on top of, but I've always just
added it behind. I'm not really sure
why. It's also easier to stick it that way. And you can add things then on top of that to make the hair look like it's
supposed to be there. So I'm just going to use my face and measure up to how big
I need the hair to be. Just turning it as she can always come back
and trim it later as well. Sometimes I like
to add in a bit of darker paint to just to get some sort of lines on the hair. But it's up to you if you want to bother with that or not. It works either way. It's just a way to add
a bit more texture. I'm going to just
stick that down there. And then I'm going
to add a fringing, which is just a
simple leaf shape. You'll be basing it on one of the hair your character has. So this may be completely
different for your character, may not have any error at all. That's also fine. You can paint the
hair on if you're more comfortable doing
that or draw it on, just be creative with it. Doesn't have to be complicated. So one part of your character, which is really important is
just getting the eyebrows. And so I've just calm and
quiet simple straight eyebrow because they're just quite
zone and quite happy. But if you want
them to look angry, you can point the eyebrows
in a different direction, or you can make them bigger and make them
smaller, whatever you like. It's just a good way to
add character to any face. I've got all my bits of
my character together. I'm happy with how
I've tweaked them and I've added a
few details like on knows there's a little
bit of color just to give her a little bit
of blush TO face. And I've had a sunglasses
and then for her clothes, I have added some paper
stripes to the top. So I've got two separate pieces. So that is just a
case of cutting some really thin stripes
carefully glowing are in place. If you want to do any
pattern with the clothes, she is quite a nice thing to
spend some time doing that. So floral patterns work
really well with lots of sort of leafy shapes or
as well if it's too much, you can just make a plane codes that will also do
perfectly fine. I've made this sort
of plentiful to go on the top of that and I've just
lined up so it fits nicely. And that is just very simple. One shape with a
bit on the top and then the buckle and a pocket with a small
circle for a button. And then the other
bits are very simple. They are just basic shapes, but it might take you a
little bit of time to get the hands or the arms in the right sort of
position that you want. So just have a play
around with that. I've not bothered
with any fingers because it can get a bit fiddly. Sometimes it just
works as well to give your character mitten fingers. And that will just do find to get the idea across
that they have hands. And the same with shoes
and that sort of thing. I might add some details
to the issues later, but for now they are
going to do the job. So I'm just going to
assemble this character. And if you're unhappy with
anything at any point, you can just pull things off from the high-end
very carefully. So I wasn't really happy with
the way that was sitting. So I'm just going to pull
off and add it in again. So if you look on
the back of this, you'll see how much
things overlap. And that's a really
important thing is just to give things a lot of space so that you're not just sticking things
really edge to edge. Want to give things
a bit of leeway. So when you're making
all your pieces, feel free to make them too long so that you can
go and trim them back. But when you see
it from the front, everything should line up nicely and you don't even notice any of those big long necks
are long arms at the back. So I made this area, I'm going to add this
into my teammate, my character, who she is. She's just walking out
the ice cream shops just to buy some glue to
the back of her hand. And then what can be quite
nice if you've got thumbs, is just to shuffle that behind and have the rest
of the hand on the front. So it looks like she's
holding the ice cream. I'm just going to
pinch that down until it ethics in place. Now it's yogurt. If you have a play around with
your character, figure out what you
want them to look like, what they're
wearing, and what is important to them as a person. You can then start making so you can work on the face,
work on the clothes. And once you've
done all of that, drew me in the next lesson
where we're going to craft all of the objects in our scene which will make it come to life.
9. Craft Your Objects: Hi guys, welcome back. In this lesson,
we're going to be figuring out all of the
objects in our scene and the ways to add lots of nice details to it
and make it come alive with all of those
small things that will draw the eye to different
parts of your illustration. So coming back to my sketch, the objects I've gone with a quite generic ice
cream shop objects. I've not looked up any pictures of an ice cream
shop with just base these things on my memory
and ideas from my head. And I would really encourage
you to do the same thing. You don't need all
of the details of this theme to know
that this is a poster, this is a milk bottle, that this is a
scoop of ice cream. None of those things I've
based on actual images. I've just kinda made
the buffer my head. And I've really simplified
them because we're not gonna be able to get
in too much detail, but we just want
to get the idea of them across are the
essence of them across. So a good example of this is I once had a project and making lots of
musical instruments. And I was getting so
bogged down in what those instruments to
look like in reality, that when I made
them, they literally stiff and they looked basically like they
were in real life. And I don't think
you need to do that. You want them to
be free and fun. So once I stepped away from my original sketches and just thought about what does
the double bass look like? I made it and it became
something that was in my style, something that was
a bit more fun and got the essence of
a double base across, but wasn't too detailed or too bogged down in the small
intricacies of that instrument. And the same goes
for this piece here. We're not needing to
put all the numbers on the clock or all of the other word milk
and the milk bottles. We're just needing to put the very basics so that you can see that they're
seen as ****, but it's not too busy. So now I'm going to go
ahead and make some of these shapes myself and
put the objects together. Again, it can be
measuring things up to your sketch if you would like. Just to check they're
the right size. Sometimes it's quite easy
to make these things too big and then the spaces
kinda gets cluttered. I'm just making
sure my corners and nice and soft just
to give a level of softness to the
illustration so it doesn't have kinda pointy edges. So here are a few of my objects. I still got a few to make, so I'm going to come back
to center them later, but most of them are
coming together nicely. So they can be as simple as you like or any that
maybe doesn't look like much out contexts,
but in context, it will go next to a
pink one and there'll be a small source for
your ice creams. And if you're making,
you're seeing, I would maybe suggest making me around five to seven
objects if you like. You can make as many
as you like or have even felt that I've
seen if you want to. But if you're just practicing a few different
objects that will bring something
different to your scene. So you might want to put
a little animal in there. You might want to add some more, so signage and some
bits and pieces around just to add those details that
will bring it to life. So I'm going to come back
and add some details here and also some highlights on the door
and that sort of thing. And I'll show you them when I'm assembling
my final scene, you can see those
small things that will bring it together nicely. So now it's your turn. If you go and have a think about the objects that
you want to include, make all the details, add all those layers in. Take time over this
small details, but remember to simplify things, keep things quite fresh
and illustrative. So once you've finished
making all of your objects, if you gather them all together. In our next lesson,
we're going to be assembling our final piece.
10. Assemble Your Scene: Hi guys. This is the most exciting part where
everything comes together. So we're going to spend this
lesson assembly are pieces. I'm going to show you a couple of different ways to do that. And by the end of it, we should have a finished illustration. So there are three main ways that you can
assemble your piece. One of them is
just a simple glue that we've been using all along. So you can just go back
to your pen and use tacky glue and
assemble it that way. You could also use some
firms sticky pads, which you can get
from most places you just want a thin one,
nothing too thick. And with those you can create a little bit of
depth in your piece. So you can raise some
of the larger pieces or maybe your character up
from the background. And the third way is using
some double-sided tape. Any kind of double-sided
tape will do the job. You just need a little bit
on the back of your pieces. And sometimes it
can just save you a bit of glue, save
you a bit of time, especially if it's a larger
piece like maybe my archway and this bit I'm going
to use my tape for. Now that's all sorted. I'm going to go ahead and
assemble my piece just to reminder that
I'm using a piece of mount board as my base for this. You can use anything like card
or another piece of paper. But mount board for me
is quite a steady base. I'm just touching my background to that base of the art board. You can cut the sticky foam pads and a half if you
need a smaller ones, that works really well
and you can even cut them as small as you
need them to be. Okay, so that's my
piece finished. I stuck everything together
and assembled it all nicely. It's very sturdy. I can always go back and re stick anything
if it comes off. But I'm quite happy with
how things are looking is not exactly the
same as my sketch, but that's totally fine. So throughout that
some of the things that I did differently that
you might have noticed, I used a lot of these foam pads, but some of them I
stopped completely wrong. So I went back and I took
them off and changed it. I wants everything to
be on a similar level. So I have got foam pads on this, but, but not on this, but it's helpful to just add an extra bits of paper
if you're unhappy with the way something sitting
out as a bit of paper here and I sat as some
highlights and the door, you can add small details like
the leaves and the bricks. They really help
it to come out as soon as that of those
bricks in that, or just kinda came to
life a little bit. You can spend ages tweaking it, but sometimes it's good to
just say stop, I'm done. That's what I'm going to.
Okay, so now it's your turn. If you assemble your
piece using the glue that you have on the tape
and sticky foam pads, assemble it all until
you're happy with it. Then in the next lesson, I'll show you how
to photograph it and present it as
your final piece.
11. Share Your Work: Now that we've
finished our pieces, I'm going to show you
a couple of ways to share them with your
friends and family. There are two main
ways that I do this. I either take a good photo of the piece and that's the
best way to share it online or to keep it in
my portfolio images. Or I would frame the piece
and put on the wall, show it to everyone
that comes around. If you're really
proud of your piece, that's a great way to do it. And I'll talk a little bit
about frames that really suit the pay for art style. So feel free to
graphing your work. You don't need anything special. A lot of people
will just use their foreign and that is
completely fine. I don't have the best
camera on my phone, so I usually use
my actual camera, which is just an old DSLR. And I just with a 50 mil lens, which is very common
and very easy to use, kinda gives you a
nice depth of field. If you're taking a
picture from the side, you can see all the
layers of the paper. In that way. It doesn't really nice job of
bringing in lots of light. So when I photograph my pieces, I always use natural light. I will just put the piece
next to a big window. Use my camera, let as
much light in as possible because natural light captures
the texture of the paper, the shadows of the paper and the colors come out quite
naturally as they are. I see as well. That's just a really simple
way to get a good photo, whether you're using
a phone or a camera. I normally just shoot
my pictures from above, have them on a low table, stand above it by that window. And take the photo from there. It's quite nice to
get a kind of behind the scenes look at how
the layers are forms. So sometimes get shot
from this sort of angle. And just to see how
these layers are all kind of coming up and down from the page because sometimes from above
you lose that a little bit. But if you've got the
right shadows and if you are repositioning
things by the window, you'll eventually
get photo that gives the same message across as
your piece in real life, my one random top tip for taking a photo of
your paper piece is sometimes a camera doesn't pick up the paper very well
because it's quite flat. So if you're taking a photo, you're taking it from above. Sometimes it's good
to just like put your scissors or a pencil or something nearby because then the camera will have
something to focus on. It's helpful tip
if you're trying, if you're struggling to get those really sharp lines of
the paper onto your camera. I would recommend
editing your photos, so I use Lightroom
for all my editing. But my main reason for using
that is because you can go in and pick out every color and edit
that vary slightly. So if you're being picky on how the colors
look in reality, and you can't get them to look
quite the same in a photo. Editing it that way is
a really good way to bring out the best
of the colors and even sometimes change
them a little bit. If you're not happy
with them in reality, you can tweak them a bit, tweak the hue and saturation so you don't have
to use Lightroom. You can use whatever photo
editing program you've got. Even if you're on
your phone, you've probably got a way
to edit a photo. That way you're just trying to tweak all the settings
until you've got something that really
makes the piece saying and really makes the
piece jump off the page. So whether we're photographing
a piece of framing it, we want the fact that it's made of paper to
be the main thing. We want that to really be able
to be clear to the viewer. So if we're framing it, we don't want to squash it against the glass
like some frames, we'll just have no space
between the glass and the back. So you're losing all
the layers are there, you're losing a lot
of the shadows. You just want something that
is going to give your piece a lot of space and
space to stand out. So a frame that's deeper
has maybe a spacer in it, which is just a bit of a gap between the glass and the back, will allow your paper
piece to really stand out. So you either want
a nice boxy frame, which I've got for my piece, or you can also get these bras frames which
have two sheets of glass. They are sometimes bigger than this. This is just a small one. But those are also quite nice because there's a bit of space between the two sheets
of glass and you're not being distracted by any
sort of background. So those work really
well for paper pieces. So I'd really
encourage you to find a way to present your
work in the best way, whether it's framing it or
taking a photo or both. You can then present
it to your family. You can share it online and just really celebrate the work that you've done during this course.
12. Final Thoughts: So congratulations if
you've made it this far, you've made a really lovely, painful piece and let's come
together really nicely. I hopefully you can
use his skills again. You can build on them, come back to them, Come back to your piece and add more to it. Absolutely love it
if you would share a picture in the
project gallery below. So I can be inspired by you and that we can both carry
on making things together. So if you want to
find more of my work, you can find me at
lowercase a is on most things and our
website is lowercases.com. And it's the same for Instagram. Thank you so much for taking this course and see you soon.
Laura K Sayers, Illustrator, Paper Artist
