Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi. I'm Mel, and I'm an illustrator and art teacher based in London. In this class, we're going to be transforming a line drawing into a series of pop art illustration by using some really simple techniques in Photoshop. The method we'll be using in this class are based around color separation. That's going to enable us to really quickly and easily produce lots of different colored versions of the same design. We're going to be using scanned textures to fill your design, rather than flat Photoshop colors. This is going to give your illustrations a much more handmade quality. I'll explain why this is a really important aspect of my own illustration practice, and how you can go about creating your very own texture library to use in your own illustrations. I've provided a few textures to get you started in the class project resources. We'll take a brief look at pop art and the artists and inferences behind it, so that you can incorporate this knowledge into your choice of design if you want to. You don't need to be great at drawing to take this class. I'm going to be showing you some really simple tracing techniques. I've even provided some templates in the class project resources to get you going on your class project straight away, whatever you're drawing ability. You don't need to be experienced with Photoshop to take this class because I'll be going through all the stages of the process step-by-step. This class is for anyone who's interested in things like illustration, graphic design, printmaking, or someone who just wants to have a go at a new technique. I can't wait to see what you produce. Let's get started.
2. Tools And Materials: Here's a list of all the things that you're going to need to take this class. To create your line drawing, you're going to need: a piece of white A4 paper, a pencil and eraser, a black pen, a fine liner is ideal, it just needs to be something which is going to give you a nice, strong dark, smooth line. Something optional, access to an A4 printer if you plan to print out and trace your design. Another optional thing, a lightbox can be useful if you're going to print and trace your design, but I'll show you an alternative way of making tracing easier if you don't have one. To create your pop art illustration, you're going to need Photoshop. If you don't already have Photoshop, you can subscribe to it for a month, which is about 10 pounds per month, or you can download a free trial. A link to this is included in the course description. A scanner, you're going to need this so that we can bring a drawing into Photoshop to work with it digitally, but if you don't have a scanner, you could use a digital camera instead. Optional, some different types of paper or card to scan or photograph to use as your fill texture. Alternatively, you can download the textures that I've provided in the class project resources. Now it's time to ensure that you have all these things to hand. In the next video, we're going to have a brief look at pop art so that we can start thinking about what you're going to use for your design. I'll see you there.
3. A Brief Look At Pop Art: In this video, we're going to have a brief look at pop art, and the artists and influences behind it, so that you can incorporate this into your choice of design if you'd like to. Pop art started in the 1950s but became popular in 1960s in America and Great Britain. It drew inspiration from popular and commercial culture, such as Hollywood movies, advertising, product packaging, pop music and comic books. Pop art, as Richard Hamilton listed the characteristics of pop art, in a letter to his friends, the architects; Peter and Allison Smithson, "Pop art is popular, designed for a mass audience, transient, short term solution, expendable, easily forgotten, low cost, mass produced, young, aimed at youth, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business." Andy Warhol is arguably one of the most recognizable artists of the pop art movement. Creating paintings and making prints of iconic subject matter, such as Campbell's soup cans, celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis, Coca-Cola bottles, $ signs, Mickey Mouse and flowers, among other subjects. Most of these works were produced by using the screen printing process, which takes advantage of the flexibility offered by color separation, where the different colors within an image, or on separate screens, or in our case, separate layers in Photoshop. This means it's very easy to change the color of a layer, and in doing so, this is what's going to give us our pop art effect. Thinking about what we know about Andy Warhol, and about pop art, you may like to consider what type of objects or designs might be relevant to use as a subject of our pop art illustration. Take a moment to jot down a few notes, perhaps do a bit of research online, or maybe you don't want your design to be influenced by a pop art at all. You just want to give it the pop art look and that is absolutely fine too. If you need a bit of help, or are unsure which objects to use, I've provided a PDF in the class project resources, which you could choose to print out and use if you want to. In the next video, we're going to be creating your line drawing, which is going to be transformed into a pop art illustration. If you have an idea now about what you'd like to base your drawing around, please join me in the next video, and I will see you there.
4. Creating Your Line Drawing: We're now going to create your line drawing to bring into photoshop. You could draw something free hand or you could print out an image from the internet and trace it. I've provided a few examples of the types of objects that would make really successful designs for this class project, in the class project resources. The images at the start of the PDF are a little simpler, so that will be easier to work with, whereas the ones at the [inaudible] provide a bit more of a challenge, so bear this in mind if you're going to use one of these when making your choice. If you're using Google image search to find an image you want to trace, here's a quick tip which could make things a bit easier. If you click on the tools tab under the search bar, you then have the option to filter the images by size. If you search just large images to begin with, when you then print out A4, it shouldn't be too pixelated and therefore difficult to trace. You might get away with medium-sized images, but you just need to avoid the small ones. If you're tracing your design, it can be useful to use a light box if you have one to help you see more clearly through the paper when you're tracing the small details. But if you don't have a light box taping your printed image on your full drawing paper over it onto a window on a bright day will produce exactly the same effect. A few things to consider there as you create your line drawing. Try to make it large on the A4 page, but not going off the edges of the paper. Make sure you close any line gaps, that means any gap where two lines should join. If you have any gaps there, things won't work as they should in Photoshop later on. Please make sure you close any gaps you can see in your drawing. Designs work best which have quite a few distinct, separate areas fully enclosed by a line. For example, packaging with labels or text works well because there are lots of sections to outline, which can then become different colors. Avoid any tiny fiddly details as it will make your design look messy. Avoid any tiny sections smaller than about three millimeters round. This might mean in some cases you need to simplify your design. For example, leaving a tiny detail out, or in the case of this text, I've just gone over it as a line drawing rather than enclosing it, which later will give me the effect of it being left white. Once you've created your line drawing, make sure you wrap out any pencil lines, close any line gaps and then you'll need to scan or photograph it so that we can start working with it in photoshop. If you're not sure how to do this, take a look at my other colors, photoshop basics, creating a simple color separation, whether it's the lesson titled digitizing new design, which is the fourth video. This outlines how to get your drawing onto your computer using a scanner or a camera. There's a link to this class in the class description. Once you digitize your design, why not go ahead and start your course projects? It's really great to see the before and after photos of your line drawing and then seeing it transformed into the proper illustration. In the next video, we're going to talk about texture. I'm going to show you how I use textures in my own work and explain why and show you how to start your own texture library. Join me there when you're ready.
5. Texture: In this video, we're going to be looking at texture. When we use Photoshop, we can fall into the trap of creating something which doesn't look handmade or like it belongs to us. This is one of the main reasons why I use real Scanned Textures in my own illustration work. If you compare the look of a scanned paper, to its equivalent flat Photoshop produced color, you'll see what I mean. Using Scanned Textures will give you illustrations more life and personality. If you look closely at the work of different illustrators, you'll soon realize that most of their images are made up of textures rather than a flat color. It's good to experiment with different textures to see how you like the effects they each give. If you're like me you'll probably end up with one or two favorites which will be your go to textures you'll use again and again in your own work. This can be quite useful in helping you to develop an illustrative style, because even though you may produce very different images, if the textures seem familiar it can help your body of works or feel more connected to you. Another benefit to using a scanned colored paper as your texture, is to create a consistency with your color palette by limiting how much you push and change color in Photoshop. If you look at these examples, you'll notice the collection of colors on the left seems more harmonious than the ones on the right. This is because I only changed a hue of the colored paper, but left the lightness and saturation as it is, which makes for a much more unified color scheme. This can really help to develop a signature within your own work too. The texture you use doesn't need to be anything particularly rough or noticeable. In fact, quite the opposite, it should be quite subtle, otherwise it can really get in the way of your illustration. It also doesn't matter what color your paper is, because we're going to change that in Photoshop. You do want your paper to have a color though, because if you use white or a very pale color, like yellow or a pustule, you will most likely find that the texture disappears when you start manipulating it. Have a look at the surface and texture of different types of paper you may have at home, or visit your local art shop and have a browser of the papers they sell. You only need an A4 piece of your choice in texture for this project, and you only really need one texture, although you might enjoy building up more so that you can experiment with different ones to see what works for you. Once you have your paper or papers, scan them in at 300 dpi or photograph them and save them somewhere on your computer that you can access them easily, as you might be surprised at how often you want to use one. If you really want to experiment and go for a comprehensive texture library, is a good idea to think about how you catalog your textures, perhaps using folders like rough, medium or smooth which will help you decide which type of paper to choose for that particular illustration. I've uploaded some scanned textures into the project resources, so if you'd rather not scan your own, you can just download and use one of these. In the next video, we're going to start combining your Scanned Texture with your line-drawing illustration, so make sure you have both those things open in Photoshop. Remember if you're not sure how to digitize either your drawing or your chosen texture, check out the video digitizing new design in my class, Photoshop basics, creating a simple color separation. There's a link to this in the course description. I'll see you in the next video.
6. Coloring Sections Of Your Design With Texture: Now you should hopefully have your drawing and your scanned texture, both open in Photoshop. You can flip between them by just clicking on these tabs at the top of the screen here. As we work in Photoshop, I'm going to be referring to some simple keyboard shortcuts. I work on a Mac, so what often be using the command key. If you're on a PC, just substitute this for control. You can see a full list of keyboard shortcuts on a link that I've provided in the course description. You'll also notice when you go to the menus at the top of the screen, the keyboard shortcuts are shown on the right-hand side. If you haven't already done so, you may need to crop the edges of your design to remove any background or visible edges of the paper. From your Toolbar to select the Crop tool, click and drag a box over your design and if you need to individually adjust the sides of your cropped preview so that you know that you're definitely cropping off the sides of the paper and when you're happy, just press Enter. Next we'll just need to brighten it up a little bit as it's quite likely to be looking a bit gray from the scan. Now go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen, Adjustments and Brightness and Contrast. Now because we're working with a black and white image it is really important that you check the box that says "Use Legacy" before you start moving means brightness and contrast sliders. This is going to give you a much clearer result. Just boost the brightness and the contrast. You don't need to do too much. You're just trying to make the background nice and bright and white and your lines really nice and dark and black. Once you think you've got a good result, just press OK. We're now going to create a new file to work on. At the top of the file menu, just go to New, select, Print A4, and just ensure that the resolution is 300 and then click Create. You'll now have three pages open in Photoshop, your new page, your line drawing, and you're scanned texture. Go back to the file that your drawing is on, and we're now going to bring your drawing into the new page. From your Toolbar, select the Magic one tool, and now select the background of your drawing. From a Select menu, just go to inverse and this is going to change the selection from the background of your image to what's inside the outer lines of your design. Now we can copy by pressing Command C on the keyboards. Go into your new page and paste by pressing Command V. In your new page, you should now have two layers visible in your Layers window over on the right-hand side, if you don't see your layers window, just go up to the Windows menu at the top and hit Layers. It should have a tick next to it if you can see it. It can be a good idea at this stage to start naming your layers. To do that, just double-click on Layer 1 and I'm just going to label mine line drawing. We now want to ensure that you're happy with the size and position of your image on the page. Go to the Edit menu at the top and free transform or you can press Command T on your keyboard, so that we can see the position on the page properly. I'm just going to zoom out a little by pressing Command minus and you can zoom back in with Command plus. I'd like to make my line drawing a bit larger on the page. I'm going to hold down the Shift key and click and drag one of the corners of my box my free transform box. You can see my drawing is getting proportionately bigger. It's not being distorted. If I didn't hold the Shift key down, it can do that. It can distort by getting, squashed or stretch and this is not what we want. If you've done that accidentally, don't worry if you just press Escape, it will go back to how it was before. Holding the shift key down, make your desired nice and large on the page, just so that it has a bit of space around it and it doesn't go off the edge of the page and then center it. If your design is crooked a little or you scanned in not quite straight, you can't rotate when you're in free transform. You'll see when you're near a corner of your free transform box, the mouse would turn into a curved arrow, which if you just click and drag it, will pick up the box and rotates it. When you're happy with the size and position and straightness of your design, just hit Enter. We're now going to make a new layer, so in your Layers window, click the button on the top right-hand side with the horizontal lines on it. Go to New layer. I'm going to call this layer color 1. Because it's going to have our first color texture on it. Just press OK, and make sure that that is the layer that is currently highlighted in the layers window. Now from the toolbar, select the Magic one tool if it's not already selected and just check out the top of your screen that the tolerance is somewhere around 30-38 and set the box that says sample or layers has a tick in it. We're not going to choose which parts of your design are going to all be filled in with your first chosen color. How many different colors you include in the final design, and therefore, how many layers you're going to create might depend on how complicated or simple your design is. As a general guide, I would say have no more than four colors in your design and then the fifth color for the background, your line layer will then become the sixth color. It's important to think about this now, because how many different colors there are and therefore layers there are, may affect how many sections you're going to select for your first color. For example, if you have a very simple design, like say the first three in the PDF that I've provided, then having three colors should be enough. The design that I'm using was near the end of my PDF. I'm going to choose four colors of different layers plus a fifth color for the background layer. You're now going to select multiple sections of your design using the magic one tube. If you bring the mouse into your design, select your first area. You now need to hold down the Shift key. You'll see when you do this, a plus symbol appears. Just undo your magic wand. Which means that you can keep clicking and selecting areas to add to this selection. Just be really careful, check your design because you've got lots of sections here. See, for example, down here it's been stopped by this line. So I know I need to select this area as well. You might be choosing something quite fiddly like this section here, which is probably my most fiddly everyone this design and I really probably should simplify this a bit. Don't forget if you have lettering that you may need to click inside some of the letters if they have holes in them, like the O's, and the A's, and the D's. If you accidentally select a bit that you didn't mean to, you can actually take away from your selection. If you just hold down the Alt key, you'll see you get a minus symbol appear under your magic wand and that means that you can just take away from your selection. Translator space between shapes you're selecting, so that you'll have different colors next to each other, rather than two adjacent sections of the same color. Once you're happy with your selection, hover the mouse and cite one of your selected areas. Just going to zoom out so I can see the design a bit better. You see the arrow when you're inside a selected area, it turns into a arrow with a rectangle. Now, you need to click and drag holding down the mouse key. Don't let go and we're going to go to your scanned texture, still holding down the mouse key. Then once I got over my texture, I'm now going to let go of the mouse. You can see that the selection appears that make sure that you move it to a position where it's entirely on your texture. You don't want half of it coming off. So center it on the page and we're going to copy say Command C. Go back to your new file, make sure that you're still on the correct layer, color 1 and now you're going to paste with Command V. We now have our first area filled with texture. Now you can see that I missed a little bit in that area that was particularly fiddly. I'm just going to zoom in so you can see I have missed a little section in the middle. I'm just going to use my magic wands to select the bits that I missed and I am going to repeat the same process. I'm going to just click and drag, take it to my texture, Command C to copy. Come back. Make sure that I'm still on the layer that says color 1 and paste. Now you can see what's happened in my layers window over here, it's actually created automatically a new layer for that little bit that I've just added. Now, I want all of those areas of grades to be on the same layer. If you go to your Layers menu at the top of the page and you're on your uppermost layer minus called layer 1. If you just go to merge down, what that's going to do is it's going to merge layer 1 into the layer that's called, color 1. Now if I just go over to the eye symbol and turn it on and off, you'll see that now it's taken that piece of texture and puts it onto the layer that's called, color 1. If you make any mistakes when you're doing a selection and miss an area is quite easy just to keep adding to the bits on that particular layer. I'm just going to zoom out now so we can see the design better. Now before we move on, we're going to just color these sections of texture. Now, I've intentionally used gray scanned texture for this example just in case you've done the same thing. To change the color of your texture, you need to use your keyboard and press Command U. If you have used a texture which does not have a color, so it's gray, you need to check the box that says colorize. At this point, it's made the color quite dull. But we can very easily boost that if you just turn the saturation up a little bit, you don't need to do it too much. If you go too far, you can see the color starts to become a bit too vibrant and also you will start to lose the texture once you go too high with your saturation. If you remember what I said in my texture video, if you try and limit just how much you're pushing and pulling the color by not changing the saturation of the lightness too much. It's also going to help you create a really nice unified color palette. So just really slowly change the hue, changed the slider until you get a color that you're happy with and then press OK. Remember, you can always come back and change these colors later so you don't need to be 100 percent sure that you've got the right color straight away. In the next video, we're going to add all the other layers of color to completely fill your design, so I'll see you there.
7. Filling The Rest Of The Design: Now you have your first color layer complete. You're going to repeat this process as many times as you like to create as many different colored layers as you want to include in your illustration. Remember, I recommend no more than four plus a different color for your background. Your line layer will then become the sixth color. Start with another new layer in exactly the same way as we did before. Press the button on the top right here, go to new layer and I'm going to call this color two and hit "Okay". Make sure that that layer is selected and then if it's not already selected, go to the magic one tool in the toolbar and now we're going to select multiple areas of our design, which we are going to turn into a second color. Remember to hold down the Shift key. Don't forget, you may need to zoom in on some areas that were a little bit more fluidly. I've selected all the areas that I would like for my second color, I'm now going to click and drag that into my texture, make sure it's not going off the edges. You may need just to click and reposition it. Copy with Command C and then go back into your new file and press "Command V" or paste. Now you can see I've missed a couple of little sections but we can do the same thing we did before. Just going to select those two areas, bringing them into my text file, released the mouse, copy and paste that's filled that in. But remember, it's created a new layer. Layer one that's got that little section. I'm going to go up to my layers menu and just merged down. That's section is merged onto color to pressing Command U, I'm just going to change the color. Check the colorized books, and I might just leave it then. Do repeat this until the inside of your design is completely filled with color and you have your three or four layers depending on how many you plan to use. Finally, create one last layer which is going to be your background. Select outside your design so that you can fill that every with color as background. If you now have a look at your layers window, you should have, depending on how many colors you've done. About six layers now. You have your line drawing layer colors one, two, three, and possibly another fourth color, which will inside your design, and then you have a background layer and so now your whole illustration is in color. In the next video, we're going to start manipulating the line layer.
8. The Line Layer: At this point, we are going to to experiment a bit with your line layer. If you look at these prints by Andy Warhol of Michael Jackson and Queen Elizabeth, you can see that there is a colored line layer which looks really effective and it makes the prince look really three-dimensional. Before we start playing with the color of the line layer, we're going to change its position. At the moment, it's probably at the bottom of your layer order. If you go to your Layers window and just click and drag it, you can change the layer order around. Get your line there to the very top of your Layers window. This will probably mean that it's blocking out some of your colors. If you turn the eye on and off, you'll be able to see that the colors are still there underneath, but they're just being covered up by the white areas. From your Toolbar, select the magic wand and just click in any of the white areas on that line drawing layer. Now, go to the select menu and go to Select Similar. That's going to look for all areas of white on that layer cool line drawing so that everything that's white is selected. Now you can press delete and the white areas will disappear. Just de-select with Command D. Now we can play with the color of your line layer. We'll do this in exactly the same way as we changed the color of your textured layers earlier. On your keyboard, just press Command U. Now, before we change the hue and saturation and lightness, just check the box that says colorize. Because this is a dark black line, you will need to turn up the lightness and the saturation before you start changing the hue. You'll notice that as I've done that now, the line layer has turned red. If I now drag the hue slider, the line layer will change color. Once you're happy with the color that you have, just press "Okay" and at this point, before we start changing too much, we're going to start saving your files. In the File menu, go to Save As. Label your file as something that you'll remember and leave the format drop down at the bottom as Photoshop, which is going to give you the file extension.PSD after your file name, then click on "Save." The.PSD file extension means that it's going to be saving as a Photoshop format file, which is going to save all of the different layers so that you can open up the file later and change the colors, the size, and the position of them. If you're happy with how all the colors look at the moment, you may also want to save a version as a JPEG. It's important to do this because you'll need to have a version of your file of JPEG to start uploading them in your class project. Go to File and Save As again. This time just change the format to JPEG and save. That's going to save the flattened version of your file, so it won't have all the layers in it and you won't be able to edit it. Now that we have those two versions of this file saved, we can start playing around with the position of the line layer as well as its color. If you go to the move tool in your Toolbar, you can see that you can just pick up and slightly move your line layer. You don't want to do this too much because it can look a little bit messy if it's too far from its original position. You may want to just use the Arrow keys to give you a bit of a subtle movement. This can create a really nice off-register effect where everything isn't lining up perfectly. That can give the design a little bit more interest and three-dimensional quality. You may now want to save another version of this file with the line layer in its new position. Go to file and Save As again. Just give it a slightly different name. You could use numbers, something that I do very often and make sure that it's a JPEG. You don't need to save multiple versions of the PSD file as long as you have one and save. You can also change the size of the line layer. If you press Command T, which is free transform, as we did before, hold the Shift key down and click and drag the corner of the free transform box. You'll see that you can just slightly change the size of your line layer. For this version, I might just change the color of it as well. I'll press command U and then drag the hue slider to create a new version of the color. Once you're happy press "Okay" and remember to save your file. You may also like to try out actually removing the line layer completely. You can just click on the eye, on the line drawing layer and that will make it disappear. You might really like this effect. I'm going to save another version like this. Remember to save it as a JPEG and click "Save". In the next video, we're going to start changing the colors of all the different layers in your design to create your Pop Art Series. Once you've experimented with the line layer a little bit, join me in the next video, and I'll see you there.
9. Changing Colors: Before we start experimenting with changing all the different layers of color, I've just noticed in my design, I have a couple of little dots in my layers of texture, which were probably caused by having some dust on my scanner glass when I was scanning either my texture or my line drawing. I'm just going to show you how to fix those just in case you have some in your own design. First of all, zoom into the area that has the little dots in it by using command plus. Now, in your Layers window, using the eyes, you can work out on which layer those little dots are on. I can see, for example, that it's like a little hole in my green layer here. Select the layer that you want to color in your little dot. Then from the toolbar, select this tool here, which is called the clone stamp tool. Now because we're working with texture, we can't just color in the little hole with a paintbrush because it's going to look completely different to the texture that's already there. What the clone stamp tool does, is it will actually copy the texture and the color. First of all, you'll notice that the brush size, which is preview there as a circle, is much too large. I can make that smaller by using the square brackets. Left bracket will make it smaller and the right bracket will make it bigger. You just make it a little bit larger than the whole that you're trying to cover. Now, if you just go slightly to the side of your hole in the texture and press the Alt key. You'll see that the mouse would turn into a target. If you click the mouse here. Then let go of the Alt key and just hover over your hole you will see it will give you a preview. Because what it's doing is it's picking up what it can see from where you pressed Alt and filling it in a few centimeters over. If you just click, you can now feel that we are in. Now I have another area here, which it won't color over because I think it's on a different layer. Go through your layers and as you turn them off and on, you may see it disappear. I can see that it's on my line drawing layer. Now, in this case, I don't want to color this in, but I actually just want to rub it out. You can go to the eraser tool and just click and drag and it can get rid of that little spot. Just check over your illustration. See if you have any other areas like that. I can see, for example, a little hole in my purple layer here. I'm going to select my background. Here's my claim stamp tool again. Hold down the Alt key. Click and just color it in. I suspect that little bit of red might be on line drawing layer again. Let's have a look. I'll just go to my rubber. Make sure that you're on the correct layer. It goes to line drawing layer and then rub it out. I'm happy now that I've got rid of those areas of dust that I can now start changing the colors of my layers. Let's start with our background layer on your keyboard to select Command U and we can change the hue, goes through each of your color layers in the Layers window and just have a play with changing the hue. That you get slightly different results. I'm not going to change the lightness and saturation too much as I said before, because I want to keep the color palette fairly harmonious, as well as changing the colors of your texture layers, don't forget, you can also change the color of your line-drawing layer. Once you have a result, you'll happy with. Don't forget to go to File and Save As, and save it as a JPEG. Have a play around, change each of the color layers as much as you'd like to. Perhaps even change the position of them or the relative size. Have a play with turning some layers on and off. This could give you some really interesting effects as well. For each version that you create that you're happy with. Just remember to save the version as a JPEG file, so that you can upload them into your class project.
10. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on creating your pop art illustrations. Please, post them in your class project. I can't wait to see what you've made. I hope you enjoyed this process and can see other ways that you can use this technique in your own work. I now use this process all the time in my own illustration work and I hardly ever use flat Photoshop colors. If you have any questions, technical issues, or feedback, please post in the class community board, I'll be checking there regularly. If you post any of your work from this class on social media, please be sure to tag me with #melryeskillshare, because I'd love to see what you've done. If you enjoyed this class, be sure to follow me so that you'll be notified when I publish new classes. If you enjoyed it, it would be great if you could give me a review and give me a thumbs up. Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I really hope you enjoyed it and I hope I'll see you again in another one of my classes soon. Bye for now.
Mel Rye, ✎ Artist + Educator
