Skillshare Live: A Fun Activity to Boost Your Digital Drawing Skills

1. Introduction: The thing I love about vector art in iPad Illustration is the freedom that comes along with it. I'm free to go wherever I want, create whatever I want to. Hi, I'm Robert Generette III, also known as Rob Zilla. I am a illustrator, educator, and self-proclaimed vector art monster. You might have seen my work on ESPN, with the Golden State Warriors, the Obama Foundation, various sports teams. My work has been in a lot of places. In today's lab session, what we are going to do is, we're going to go all the way back to your primary school art class where your teacher gave you an assignment where you had to take a photograph, cut it in half, and you were tasked with completing the other side. This is a great activity if you're in creative rut, you don't know exactly what to create at the time or it can be used as a warm-up activity for whenever you want to loosen up those creative muscles. We'll be adding a digital twist to that whole entire assignment, where we use an iPad in order to create it. I'll be using Fresco, you can use the drawing application of your choice and we're going to have some fun. We'll be using all different types of line work, you'll get know and learn the UI, you'll get to see that problem-solving for real life situations or any troubleshooting that may come along right there on the spot. The subject that we're going to be using today is going to be a shark. If sharks aren't your thing, then you can bring in the photograph that you want to use and just work along with us. I hope that after taking this class, you will get the urge to want to dive in headfirst into digital illustration, and create more beautiful illustrations on your own. This was recorded live on Zoom. During the session, I may answer questions that were presented during the live session, so let's dive right into this because we're sure to have a good time. 2. Learning to Love Digital: Hi, I'm Abriana. I'm on the classes and content team here at Skillshare and I'll be hosting today's session. Rob, we are so excited to have you. Will you give us an overview of what we're going to dive into and today's project and how this ties in with the work you love to do? Well, I figured that with this activity, and this is an old school activity. I remember doing this as a child myself when it came to art classes. The teacher would tell us to select a page out of a magazine. The teacher will then cut that page of the magazine, and then keep one portion of it while giving the other portion to us. We then put it on a sheet of paper where it's just a blank sheet of paper and the image, and it was our job as creators to create the missing half. I think the most challenging part of that was there was no limitations. You can make it whatever you want to make it. For less skilled, you want to use a symmetrical image. If you want to really go to the deep portion of the water, you can do something a little asymmetrical, which means there's not necessarily a mirror image that's being done. But I figured this is the best way to get your foot wet, especially if you want to try to use Adobe Fresco. Yeah, talk about why you love using the iPad. Why not just cut a magazine in half like the olden days? It's what you can do with your image after you created. Digital gives you so many possibilities and I'm a vector artist. When I got the opportunity to draw using these mythical things called vectors, then it increased the possibility of that final image being used. It can be used for video, it can be used for printed objects, it can be used for web, I mean, it's scalable, it's incredible, it smells like fresh baked cookies. I want one. Yes, especially right now. But, I started out sheeting paper and I think I paid my dues. It was a blessing to stumble upon the iPad as a tool. I got in early. I've been doing it now for 10 years. The iPad is 10.5 years old. That's just to let you know how I'm team early hashtag on creating this stuff. But I like it because I'm free to create no matter where I am. What's the weirdest place you've created on your iPad? There's a bunch of them. The weirdest place, it's on airplane, 30,000 feet, during a storm. It was a very rocky ride, so I had to increase the smoothness and took my mind off for what was actually happening outside. Of course, it's always at night flights [inaudible] that we give woo-woo rocky and you always heard that person in the back that wants to make a sound every time the plane moves. Come on you are on the plane. That noise you made is going to cushion the fall right now. [inaudible] all in itself. Yeah. Especially if you are [inaudible]. I mean, a lot of times I would during my planning period as a teacher I would go to my Jeep. I would pull up to the nearest. We have independent league baseball team, and I would pull up into the parking lot they field in. Throw on some jazz or NPR or something and just hash out some ideas and get some stuff done. Yeah. That freedom is really nice. Kick over to you and we'll just dive in and start drying, but beforehand just give all the attendees on the call a little overview of how they can follow along. I know we have downloads if they want to use your image or pull in their own. Well, of course, you're selecting the draw on an application of your choosing. I'm using Adobe Fresco. I'm somewhat familiar with other applications, but I can't tell you exactly how to do certain things in those applications. I'm going to be doing a mix of vector and raster mixed together. If you would like to, I guess, use the image of your own, you can select that in the starting of me doing my thing, I can show you how I divided the images that were available for download. It's just a little quick way of doing it. Let me get this Screen Share popping. 3. Slicing an Image: First up, here's how you can slice your very own photograph to use just in case you don't want to use mine. Cool. I'm going to pretend like I'm one of the passages out of my car and I'm drawing and follow along. So this is the image that I'm doing actually is the one with the middle missing. I'll go ahead and pull that up. Of course, I imported that and maybe actually show touches at the beginning. So I'm going to jump into my app settings real quick and make sure that you can see exactly what's going on. To put it in perspective, if you see those two circles, then that's my fingers. You can tell if I'm pinching the zoom or they get further apart. If they divorce each other, then the picture gets bigger. If they reconcile then the picture gets smaller. If you see one thing on here at a time, then it's going to be my brush. You may see my finger gravitate over here towards a circle. This is the modifier, I call it the modifier. But it allows me to basically command or shift whenever I'm doing something. So for instance, I can draw in pencil, hold this modifier down, turnaround and erase it. Very slowly erase because my original point is small, but I can erase the whole entire thing. I think I have everything set up the way it should be set up on your screen, I'll generally take my tools and I'll put them on the right-hand side because I'm right-handed, just crazy. If you wanted to create this image, so let's say if I started out with a full photograph of the shark and I wanted to slice it. Here's a quick way that you can do that. What you basically would do is you create a new layer, which I just did. I just hit the plus sign on the right-hand side, created a new layer. What I'm going to do is I'm going to select the paint bucket fill and I want to select white. I'm going to long press with that. It's going to ask me what I want to do pixel vector for that layer. What I want to do is I want to use vector. I just like vector. So the whole entire art board images basically hidden. What I am going to do from there is, I'm going to use a transform tool which is located right here, and I want to basically just take that and I am going to to slice it in half. What it does is it mimics my teacher putting this on the cutting board and slice it in half and then we have in ago and pasted onto a sheet of paper. It also gives me freedom to either go horizontal or vertical when I'm trying to guess what the next piece is. Basically what I did was I did some similar [inaudible] and took the middle out. How can people get creative and slicing this, is there any pro or con to doing it any certain type of way? No limitations at all. We're giving you all the creative freedom. We let you roam this beach that we call creativity and do whatever it is you need to do. As a matter of fact, if you need to slice the image that you would like to use at this time then, feel free to go ahead and do that. But those are steps in which you want to use in order to do it. 4. Sketching Your Ideas: Now we're going to get started with loosely sketched out ideas. Always start where blue line sketch. I love sketching. If you're not as confident about where your lines need to go and you just want to really test the waters, sketching is the best way to do it. I just choose to use something similar to the photo blue that all artists used to use. The reason why is because the outlines that I'm going to use later on, which are going to be black, will flow right on top of those blue lines. So let's go through the first wave of this creation. The pollen count right now. I might tell you that too. Let's go over here, let's put up boys belly in there. He had a very busy summer. All of us. As you're going in here, do you have an idea of what you're going to make? Are you going for something shark like, or something totally different, or just [inaudible]. To be totally honest with you, I'm just basically going with the flow. I don't have anything in mind. I think in my last creation I had to turn him into a robot. I might do some more of that mechanics. I mean, if anybody in the chat has a really amazing suggestion, maybe, who knows, maybe we can incorporate that. Let's go for it. I think the fin is that thing that defines how tough a shark is. I got the biggest fin. Plus he's going to give you a fair warning if he's coming in the water. You might want to move. Please. You might want to move. You might want to seek some help. I'm coming. Oh wow, 11-year old son says a laser cannon on the head. I mean Oh, that would be very interested. He says sharks aren't deadly enough. Maybe it's a good laser. This laser zaps pollution. Like a laser pointer. We are going to zap straws. I hate straws, something like that. That's a very interesting thing. If I was to add that, because you see, I got the basic structure down, of the shark that I want to have here. What I would do in an instance like that so I can work non-destructive, or what I like to call bread crumbs, is to just simply add another layer, and what I may do is that may come in here with a different color. I might come in here with like a magenta reddish thing for autumn mechanical pieces that I want to put on you. So I mean, I really want him to have the best laser ever. So I'm going to come in here and, retrofit this in here. This is perfectly fine for you to go into the sections where the photograph actually is. We don't have any strict rules when it comes to this. That's where you're sharing. Feel free to do it. All of these you're planning to essentially do clean line work over, so these won't even show up in the final piece. They're more alike explorations for now? Yeah. It's just so I can see it. For most of the time, we especially like when you're doing a lot of client work, before you go in and put all the time in, clients want to see exactly what it is that this object actually is going to turn into. Trying to figure out exactly how I'm going to have this laser, and the cool thing about this working digital is that you can zoom all the way in. You really get in there, and as you can tell, I'm using a pixel brush because it's squaring up on everybody. But the texture of this looks just like a real pencil, so I just recently really started using it for my sketch work. Typically I'll use a vector brush if this was client work. But I really want to build this out in, as traditional as I possibly can. Why would you use a vector versus pixel? I know vector is your favorite. Why is that? If you notice the way that I'm working with this now, I'm going over it and over it and over it and over it. With the vector brush, it's just one swipe, and I can build and I can ideate. Most folks say that's a bad word. I can ideate quicker using that. See, I'm started to change my mind about this laser mechanism that's at the top. For me right now, it is curving too much with them, and here's one case of like that break coming into effect. It's on a separate layer. So I can go right here to my transform tool, and I can go ahead and readjust that point wherever I want to point at it. I think it's a little threatening for two feet at large. I can go in and resize it as well. We don't want there start to be too threatening. Gosh. Come on! He's an outstanding citizen in these waters. So I can come here and play around with where I'm going to put it later. Some other cool tools that I wanted to add to them maybe, that laser will want to work on that a little bit more. I mean, it's cool where it is, but it's not yelling out. It's not saying shark to me. I want this laser to really be sharp. The cool thing about Fresco and I'm not super advertising is just a tool that I use, I have libraries where I store certain assets like color, swatches, shapes, things of that nature that I can bring into this whole entire environment. Another cool thing, I think would be cool on him, and I'm going to just pop open another layer, is, you know, he needs some help getting into the water a little bit more. So I think he needs like these turbine type, something that's going to thrust him through. So I'm going to go ahead and set up the top and bottom of that. Nice curve shapes on it. For the setup that, I want to kick off the back of the siphon. I won't decide, fin a little bit like it has a panel, probably going to throw in a star in there somewhere. I like stars. Let me, not like famous people. That will be cool. But let's get a couple of stars in there. I think that these fins shall look more mechanical. So why don't we create a few slats here. I'm just going to show it in the way they begin. Your sketchy lines are going to become a language within its own. You're going to be the master decoder of your sketches. Remember sketches just a good way to dump that idea, and get it out there so that you may be able to transform it into an image later. You want to be able to see the whole thing before you start working on it. So to get a good dump in there is real good. I mean, that could be taken derogatory too, but we're in an ocean. A brain dump. Brain dump. How long can you spend on sketching? Is it one of those processes where you can just lose yourself? Yes, you can, but hopefully you just get the general idea done, and just get a foundation set before you really start adding all beautiful garnishes and stuff. In a restaurant there not going to add that garnish onto your food, when it's half cooked. So, let's get the dish cooked, and then, let's work on beautifying that dish later. Got it. So you take it until it's like I can picture this. I got it. I know where I'm going, but not every single detail. Not everything. Like, we don't want everything in there, just yet. 5. Finessing Your Sketch: Now that we have all the basics down, what I'm going to do is move some things around and finesse that sketch. As a matter of fact, I think I found a bomb placed for these lasers. I'm going to go back to it. I'm going to use my transformed tool and I'm just going to move it. Oh, yeah. That fits perfectly. Bread crumb that so you can make sure that you know how to get back. Whenever I say bread crumb, that's basically what you're doing, you're working in a nondestructive manner. That just means each new element gets its own layer essentially. Yeah, or you can color-code. Like mine, it's color-coded now. The shark's body and then the actual mechanical pieces, they're in different colors, which reminds me to put them in different layers. If I happened to merge them onto the same layer, I can easily pivot and rebound back from that without grabbing my head or doing the home-alone face and thinking that everything is just bad. I think we're good here. I can go ahead and move to my outline stage, but I still want to make this guy mechanical. What I'm going to do is, I may even come in here and flip a green just so I can show you where two pieces of metal creates a seam. I can get those down. Now, there's a hierarchy when it comes to using your line work and you do your final line work. My blue is going to be in the more dominant area, so they're going to have a thicker line to separate. My red is going to be my middle ground, and the green that I'm about to use will be that area where I might use a finer line because all lines do is just separate two areas. There's a fence between my yard and my neighbor's yard. It's a line. It's basically what it is. I just want to fence in some areas, but some areas need more security than others. I love that. Lines as fences. Fences for color, fences for fill. I think I'm very satisfied with where everything is here. If I need to move any more of these red areas, I can use this tool right here, and that's going to be my Selection tool. I'm feeling really confident with merging this layer. I'll go to the top layer and I will select Merge Down, and I'm going to merge that layer down. If I want to re-angle anything later on, I can come in here and use this tool in order to separate it from the rest of that stuff that's on that layer and just move it the way I want to move it. Create new layer. Let's go ahead and select that green, if you know what I mean. We still want to play off of the mechanical structure of this shark. When I'm drawing on the surface of the shark, I want to pretend as though I'm actually drawing on a shark, so I want to use what's known as contour lines. If I'm drawing on his fin and I want a seam to go on his fin around this area here, which I don't know why I didn't change my tool. Hit Backwards. I'll go back out to my Pixel tool. I won't draw a straight line to separate that fin unless that's how that fin is separated, which isn't a bad idea. I might actually keep this and just move it over. This could be that area where my star can go, but what I want to do instead, is I'll probably want to come here, and I want to do a line so that it mimics the curvature of that. I want this to be fitted with two pieces of metal, so that's my seam there for that. When we get to this back portion, I want to use more curved lines in order to define because if he's going to be metal, these areas have to be separated in order for his body to bend, think of Winter Soldier and how those two pieces of metal formed a line in Bucky Barnes' arm, for you Marvel Comic fans. I got my seams there alone. I'll put an X along what side that I want to actually put the rebuts just to remind me because I'm thinking on the fly right now. I want my rebuts to go there and I think my rebuts should go along this top portion. The same goes for that portion right there. Now, I want to jump into the cool part and that's the outlining part. 6. Inking Your Design: Now let's get into some digital inking. This is where you make final decisions. I will then add a new layer by hitting the plus sign and I will select my vector brush. So your vector brush, it will be this one. If you long press on it of course you get in your library. You use taper and we're going to be using basic round right now. I'm at about five point five must move this at 50, which is pretty cool. I got my dynamic pressure, got my, my velocity. All those good things. Now, pressure means that the line will , reach it's full width if I press down hard and the lighter I, press down the narrower the width will become. Velocity that means that the speed in which I move the point of the [inaudible] across the surface will determine the thickness and thinness of that stroke. I'm going to go ahead and select Black. From here, I didn't even have to create a new layer. As a matter of fact, let's delete that layer that I've just created. This application is so intuitive and it knows when a vectors is being used and when rasters being used. So what it's going to do is it's automatically going to create that vector layer for me. So that vector layer will be created automatically just in case I forget. I'm human not a shark will go up a little bit, will go to seven for my maximum width. What I'm just doing now is I'm just going to work my way around the composition and make permanent some of my sketch lines. Do you tend to do the thick main ones first? I, see this is the blue part of that primary line in your hierarchy. Yeah, let's get that main structure out. Then we can do to rest later. We don't really even have to switch brushes. We just, we can maintain a lighter touch when it comes to those other ones. What I'm going to do at it this time because it kind of throws me off. I'm going to hide my touches because I'm not able to see the point of my pencil in where the line is actually going. Will forgive you I guess. Yeah [inaudible] Here's a step two, let's see if I can get this happening. With this application I can do a stroke and hold down and it'll automatically snap it as a straight line. So stroke, hold down, snap, and you can see it happening. So when I get ready to do this slats over here, or these fins stroke, hold down, snap, stroke hold down snap. Wow. Snap, essentially it's a snap, don't know [inaudible] not a snack. This is the pollution latter 3,000. Yes. A shark industries. Now,I went to far with this line and I'll want to clean that up. I can go into my eraser, but then there's a chance I can take a bite out of an area that I want to keep. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to press the modifier. Then would drag my finger to the outside of the modifier. I'm just going to stroke through where I don't want, it's going to terminate. Where those two strokes overlap is going to do a clean, even on old ones like right here. Old one is contaminated. I'll give you a cleaner look. That's really nice. So there's the modifiers like two rings, the center and then the outside and outside one that does it. It does that. The inside will turn your brush into an eraser. 7. Finishing Touches: Now we can get into adding smaller details to really bring this to life. We're just going to use these dots to show you where this metal was actually bonded together. It's amazing how such tiny details suddenly like it clicks in your mind. "Yeah, that's metal." I get it. You're like, "Metal." I dragged that a little too much, and that bottom one is too thick [inaudible]. I'm going to use a [inaudible] hands up here. I have a feeling this is going to be like a magical transformation when you turn off the sketch layers. That must be kind of exciting, like that anticipation. Man, it's almost like instant gratification. Yeah, right? I'm impressed that you're resisting the urge to just toggle them on and off. Is that just an efficiency thing? I might see something I don't want to see right now. So I'm going to kind of chill and not do it. I'm adding these little points up here because they're going to be shadowed out. They're going to be shadowed out a little bit. I want a nice shadow here, like a hard black shadow and under here, I want a hard black shadow. These are just decisions I'm making on the fly. Just nothing really based on it. I just think that it's going to look aesthetically pleasing once I get to that point and so that I don't forget. Just like I mentioned in skill share class, I'll just draw a little x in there. Yeah. I guess after I add these little shadow parts in, I will then do the reveal. That x is a reminder to future you to fill that in, right? Yeah, like a rob, I need to fill its area in black. So I'm going to go ahead and refill and then fill. All right. There's also up in here, in your app settings, and I guess it's "Input" "Apple Pencil". You can tell your Apple pencil what to do when you double-tap the flat side of the new Apple Pencil. I got mine to zoom to fit. So I can just double-tap this, it automatically fits to zoom. So I can work in here all close with detail, and then without having to pinch again, and without having to use a second-hand, I can double-tap and it automatically pull me back out, which is dope. Let's go in and let's hide my sketches, and let's look at this mechanical body. Yes. Yeah. It's doing it. It is. Looking pretty dope. What I want to do is grab my paint bucket now and take care of all my spots on a treasure map as soon as I go back to my vector layer. This area has to be enclosed in order for you to fill it. It's not going to automatically fill an open space. Basically, I'm digging all these areas with x in it hoping to find treasure. Does this shark have a name? I wonder. Gary. Gary. [inaudible] Gary. I did an x mark the spot, but I want to black these in. I want to clean up a lot of these stuff with my eraser. Some of it it's going to come in here, and it's not doing what I wanted it to do. I just want to do a smooth [inaudible]. The cool thing about digital is, you got one of the best erasers on the planet, and you can experiment without feeling like you're going to mess up your beautiful line work. So to a lot people that may be a little bit afraid of color, it's not a problem. Just duplicate your project. Come back in and add your color. A lot of these lines are messy, but we didn't have that much time. Sometimes messy adds a humanistic field to it. Oh, boy, it's looking pretty buff now. Yeah. I would not want to run into him unless he was cleaning up straws with his laser. Yeah. He's up pulling all these straws in the ocean. You can come into the photo part and outline it too just so you can just give it all one cohesive containment. That's up to you. 8. Q&A: Now, let's open it up to some questions. We have a lot of questions about the distinction between Fresco which you're using and Illustrator for the iPad and Adobe Draw. What does Fresco give you that maybe it's different for people who are trying to figure out, do I use Draw? do I use Illustrator? do I use Fresco?. Fresco embodies an app that I use since it was created. What Fresco does is Fresco takes three different art types. You've got your pixel, you've got your vector and then they add a different component, if you switch over to mine real quick, which is called live brushes. With live brushes, what live brushes bring into fold is, let's go ahead and add a new layer, it brings watercolor into this whole mix and I mean I can control how much it a pigment and how much water I'm actually using. It grows and it swells, you can even do that jaw sound of them approaching. But the most important part for me is the vector part and I fell in love with drawing with vectors. If you're familiar with Illustrator, the brush tool desk inside a Fresco for vector is just like the blob rational steroids, that's basically what it is. I remember when it didn't have a tapered brush within the menu, and we started to take the round brush and come back into it with an eraser to chisel out points off just to get that nice little taper edge. I mean it's a nostalgia, is a sentimental part and plus I work in vectors so that's why most of the time, most of us actually will want to use Procreate because Procreate can do this, that's cool, but I'm used to creating in vector from start to finish. I'm just too familiar with it, and now that they added into this application, I mean Adobe Draw is still around, but now it has some cool neighbors or cool roommates within the same room. Do your kids ever do art alongside you? Are they inspired by dad's creativity or? A little bit. What I do is I give them their space, I believe that they should create what they want to create, and when they want to share it with me then they're free to share it with me, but I'm not going to pressure them because it can turn them away from doing this whole entire art thing. Yeah, that's true. Later they'll be at the field blaming me for ruining their possible career in art. What would you do with this guy next? Since we're not going to see it here, where would you take him next if you were to keep going? If I was to going, I would do my shadow trick, and I would simply come in here, if you paid attention then you might catch onto my shadow trick. I will take the same brush that I was inking with, and I will come to here and start putting down these translucent grades, and basically what I'm doing is I'm adding form to my flat areas. To be truthful with you, coloring will come in last, but I need to see this thing in black and white fully so that I can get a great idea of how this thing is going to look in color. I like to show my client how this thing is going to look in color. Sometimes the best client you have is yourself, so you need to show yourself that, hey, this is going to look so dope once we add some color to it because if we chose to make this area great, which I can do real quick, I will start a layer underneath those shadows. I will come in here with a nice gray, and when I go to color in you will notice that my shadows will make that area darker. Yeah. All I got to do is just lay it flat colors, I mean, this just could be a red shark, whats wrong with red? and it translates the same thing I got more burgundy and I got my regular red. That's what I will do next, play with that light establish that light so as to play into pushing and pulling and just make that this thing pop until I'm satisfied. Then I will share this, I will get feedback, and I will use it as constructive criticism. The next time I approach I can consider some things that I probably didn't consider when I was doing this one. 9. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for graving these treacherous waters with me. I really had a great time and I enjoyed showing you some of the things that I do. Hey, listen, feel free to share what you created during this session in the Project Gallery. Feel free to use this activity as a warm-up activity or startup activity just to get your juices flowing for your creative day. The fun thing about this is when you get to the end, it's like we're not going to add color today, we're really zooming in on the line work, but then it could be the adding colors, a whole other opportunity to explore, even do a coloring book , like your SkillShare class. Ooh yeah I got a SkillShare class. I forgot about that. Yeah No I didn't. If you want to explore more of my work, feel free to check out my SkillShare profile. Good bye everyone, be safe.