Turn Reference Photos into Stylized Illustrations in Procreate

1. Welcome!: Hey, I'm learning Procreate. That was made in Procreate. And by the end of this class, you'll know exactly how to do that. We'll create a small collection of Mediterranean inspired illustrations. And whilst doing so, you'll learn a set of tools and workflow you can keep using long after this class is done. To remove the What do I draw barrier, we'll start from a reference image, something online or even better, something you photographed yourself. Means that every time that you're out and about becomes an opportunity. You take the photo, you go home, you open your iPad, and you make something fun with it. Okay, but what's the real fun part? At the end, I'll show you how to turn your illustrations into stickers, patterns, social media content, or design assets because your illustrations are Too beautiful to just sit on your iPad. So make sure that you stick until the end of the class because that's where the real fun happens. Hi, I'm Silvia. I'm a designer, artist, and top teacher. Living in Barcelona. This class is open to absolute beginners and more experienced artists. Before we start, make sure to follow me here in Skillshare so you don't miss any of the feature classes, giveaways and freebies. And if you're curious about more work I do, you have many links on the description of this class where you find me online and you can become part of my online commity. Okay, grab your iPad, open, Procreate, get cozy or comfortable and see you in class. 2. Your project: For your class project, I would love if you can create your collection of illustrations using the workflow and tools that we build together. I would suggest creating at least three objects because that's when it starts feeling like a collection rather than some loose drawings. And just in case you want to keep going, I have left extra reference images for you to trace. The more you build up your collection, the more fun stuff you can do with it. If you're a complete beginner, I recommend following along with the exact objects. I'll be drawing first. If you have a bit more of experience, then, please make this project your own. Of these objects is designed to teach you specific tools and techniques. And once you've got those down, you can take the workflow anywhere, your own photos, your own objects, your own references. And the world becomes your sketchbook. And I warn you once you get the workflow, then this becomes pretty addictive. Later in the class, I will show you how to recolor your illustrations easily. So if you experiment with different color combinations, I would love to see those in your project when you finish your illustrations, please share them in the gallery of this class, and you don't have to wait until you finish all of your illustrations. You can create your project after finishing the first one and then update your project as you go. If you turn your illustrations into WhatsApp or Instagram stickers, which I'll show you how to do, you can share that part of your project by taking a screenshot and uploading it to the gallery as well. Even better and way more fun. You can post a story on Instagram and tag me because I would get so excited to see your stickers, and I would share them with my followers, too. If you enjoy the class, you learn something new and you want to support me as a teacher, I would appreciate if you can review it. It doesn't have to be long. Reviews help my class, gain some visibility, and they motivate me to keep creating more classes like these ones. This is part of a series of classes with more coming your way. So if you like this class, make sure you're following me here on Skillshare, and that way, you will be the first to know when the next one drops in. Alright, that's it. Let's open Procreate and let's start creating our illustrations. 3. Opening Your Canvas: Before we start drawing, let's quickly create a canvas that works well for both digital and future creative projects like patterns, stickers, prints or social media graphics. Don't worry too much about memorizing all of these settings. This is probably the most technical part of the class, and honestly, once the canvas is ready, we can fully focus on the fun creative part. When you first open Procreate, you will arrive at your gallery view. This is where all of your artworks and projects live. You can organize artworks into stacks, which basically works like folders, but don't worry too much about organizing everything perfectly right now. Let's create a new canvas together. The little plus symbol on the right corner and then tap the smaller plus icon to create a custom canvas. For this class, I'm going to create a square canvas that is 3,000 by 3,000 pixels at 300 DPI. This is roughly ten per 10 " or 25 per 25 centimeters. The reason we're working at this size is simply to keep our illustrations looking crisp and high quality later on, especially if you want to reuse them for patterns, prints or other projects. For the color profile, make sure you select the regular RGB profile instead of display P three. RGB tends to work much more consistently across devices and platforms. Once your settings are ready, you can name this untitled Canvas with the pixels that you're using. And this way, it will be saved as a template and will be ready for you to use for any other future projects. So tap on the blue check here on the right corner of the screen, and this document will open. Now, if you tap on the gallery word, you'll go back to the main gallery, and now, if you tap on this plus icon and scroll down this menu, you'll see your new template here at the bottom. You can send it to the top by holding it down and move it to the top of this menu. Next time you want to create this type of illustrations, you will know that it's up here, ready to be used, and that it has the right settings. Let's keep our document open. Alright, now that our canvas is ready, let's start gathering some inspiration and references for our illustrations. 4. Gathering Inspiration: If you want to start your project right now, read the description of this class and download the ones that I have left for you and move on to the next lesson. But if you want to create something unique, let me show you a few ways to gather reference images. Let's start by finding images online. You can search for inspiration almost anywhere online. I personally like using sites like Google Images, Pinterest, Excels, and splash. And if you're looking for objects or furniture, brand websites can actually be amazing references too. I sometimes browse places like Ikea, Slum, or Cave Home because their product photography is usually clean and simple, which works perfectly for this technique. Start gathering a few Mediterranean inspired references for our collection. I'm going to begin with a lemon tree branch because lemons always feel very summary and Mediterranean to me, and lately, they always seem to be on trend. Even so this image has a tiny checkered background, I think that it could work and I like its composition. The limes are isolated from the background, and so it should work. So in this case, I can simply tap and hold the image and choose safe two photos. Easy. Let's look for another object. I associate Mediterranean with going on holidays, and when I go on holidays, I really like to take some sun. So I'm going to look for a lounger. I really like these striped loungers because they can instantly create that relaxed holiday feeling. Sometimes websites don't let you save image directly. When that happens, you can simply take a screenshot instead. On the iPad, you will have to press the top button and the volume button at the same time. Before the screenshot disappears, you can tap on it and crop it tightly around the object. You can even save multiple screenshots or similar objects on different angles. That becomes really useful later on if you decide to create patterns or larger illustration collections. Also, in this case, I can see that this lounger has different options for patterns, and that is already giving me ideas on things that I can paint on mine. So whilst you search for reference images, keep your mind active. We on your creativity? If you see a chair that you like, maybe you can start thinking how you can modify that chair. What color do you want to change or what patterns do you want to add to the fabric. Let's see how to choose reference photos that you take yourself. You can absolutely use your own photographs, too, and honestly, this is where things become much more personal and interesting. Your own photos hold memories, moods, places you've been, objects from your home, or moments from your life. Those little details can give your illustrations much more personality. Here, for example, I have a photo of a drink I had during a weekend trip near Barcelona, a simple image and honestly not the best. I didn't take this photo with the intention of painting it later, but since it holds a nice memory, I'm going to try and use it for this also fits perfectly into the Mediterranean mood and creating for this collection. I wanted to introduce a new way of finding inspiration that I've been using a bit lately, and it's called AI, whether that's HAGPT Cloud or whatever tool that you use. If you're curious, you can also prompt HAGPT to create images for you. So for example, I have the photo of the pinacada, which I'm aware that is not the best photo, but it served as an example. So I uploaded it to HAGPT and I said, Can you refine this photo and create something similar? And this is what it dropped me. So you can prompt HAGPT to create images that you can also use as a reference photo. Your time collecting some images that you want to illustrate. I'm going to leave you these exact three images I'm using on the downloadable folder that comes with this class. 5. Importing References into Procreate: Okay, so now comes the fun part and honestly one of my favorite little tricks for working with references. Before we start importing our images, I just want to do a super quick introduction so that you can follow this lesson a little bit better if you're a complete beginner. You have two menus here, one on the left, and one on the right. In this icon here, you will find the layer panels, which we're going to be using a lot. Whilst importing our images, we're going to start pasting them here into Procrit. And to do so, you have to swipe three fingers down, and then this menu will appear, and in here, you will find the paste option. All of these other buttons we will use as we move through the class. So for now, let's swipe a finger app from the bottom of the screen and tap on the photo gallery icon. I'm going to open my photo gallery again and tap on one of my reference images and isolate the object that I want to draw. If you're using an iPad, watch this because it's a lot of fun. You can tap and hold your object down and see how this isolates the object from the background. In this case, it's super easy because this object is photographed over a white background. Then you can let's do that once again, tap and hold. Then this menu will appear somewhere. Tap on copy, swipe your finger from the bottom of the screen up, tap on the procrete up, swipe three fingers down and tap on paste. You're going to tap on a low paste and the object is going to appear on your canvas. You can see a bounding box surrounding it. Here at the bottom, you have this menu, select the uniform option so that the proportions of your object remain intact. And if you slide any of these corners, you will be able to enlarge and make your objects smaller. You can also move your object. Just be careful not to move it outside because then it will be cropped and then you will lose part of your image. And then to exit this transfer mode, you have to tap on the arrow icon up here on the left. If you want to transform it again, tap on this arrow icon, which is the move and transform tool and transform it again. You can see that this object has been imported onto its own layer with a transparent background, which is pretty cool. I remember the first time I discovered this and feeling like it was a bit of magic. Don't worry, if it doesn't work perfectly with every image, it usually works best when the objects have clear contrast with the background. So when your images are not too cluttered and they're separated from the background, even on this case that it has a checkered background, let me see. Coping. Paste. It works, it works. It works. It's great. Now, in this one, it might be a little bit more difficult, but in the end, it also worked. I'm going to tap and hold on this baby coping. And paste. That's pretty cool, isn't it? It didn't work though with this Bermud class. Maybe it's because it's in the background, but in that case, if for whatever reason, you cannot copy your images as stickers, don't worry. You can also tap on the range icon, tap on add, and here you can tap on insert photo and you can just tap on the image, you can adjust the size so that your object covers a good portion of your canvas and then it will be pasted in there. Why is this sticker thing so cool? Since this is a beginner's class, we're just going to create some stylized illustrations using ink. But the cool thing about working with stickers is that you can also start composing scenes. Let's say that this is a branch and a rosemary branch, and then this would leave maybe on the floor, and then I'm on the pool, and this is where I'm going to come back to. Just giving you some ideas here. For now, import your references onto your document, and in the next desen we will turn them into our own stylized illustrations. M. 6. Drawing the Sun Lounger: Okay, let's turn our reference into an illustration. The first thing I'm going to do is lower the opacity of the reference image so that it becomes a bit lighter and less distracting while we draw on top of it. Then we're going to create a new layer on top, where we will draw our illustration. To create a new layer, simply tap on the plus icon in the layers panel. You will see the new layer highlighted in blue. If you swipe a layer to the left, you will find options like delete, duplicate or lock. You can also make layers visible or invisible by tapping the little checkbox beside them. For this class, I'm going to use the dry ink brush because it creates clean, confident lines. But please feel free to use any other brush that you enjoy. The important thing is finding something that feels comfortable and you can keep consistent. Just in case you're new here, let me show you a few useful tools. On the left side of the screen, you will find these sliders. Use the top one to regulate the size of your brush and the bottom one to regulate the opacity. And remember, procrete brushes are pressure sensitive, so pressing harder creates thicker lines. To finger tap to undo and three finger tap to redo. If you struggle creating straight lines, here's a trick that will help you. Go to actions, preferences, search for pressure and smoothing and increase the stabilization and motion filtering bars a little. You will see how your lines instantly become smoother. When you move into smoother details, come back and turn them off if these effect starts feeling too restrictive. Okay, time to start our drawing. This lounger has a lot of straight lines, and let's be honest, drawing straight lines perfectly can be a bit painful. So here's a super helpful trick. Draw your line and keep your pencil pressed down at the end. Procreate will automatically straighten it for you. And by the way, you can do the exact same thing with circles and other shapes, too. When developing your drawings, always try to focus on the larger shapes first. You can always come back and enjoy drawing the little details later on. Here's another useful trick to zoom in, pinch your fingers out, to zoom out, pinch them in. If you pinch and twist your fingers, yes, you can rotate the canvas too. This makes awkward angles so much easier to draw. I'm going to rotate my canvas slightly to make it easier to close the legs of my chair. Before I forget, always try to close your shapes properly. This will make the coloring process much easier and much more fun later on. If you're copying this chair with me, you're going to be a master at creating straight lines in procrete by the end of it. Mm. I'm going to use this part of the chair to show you a new tool. This part of the chair goes on top of the leg, so I will just draw two straight lines on top of it and use the eraser to fix it. At the moment, I have a very random eraser selected. And to keep the style of my illustration consistent, I would like to erase with the same brush that I'm painting with. To do so, you'll have to tap and hold on your brush, and you will see this erase with current brush message. I don't know about you, but when I draw traditionally, I'm constantly rotating my paper around. Certain angles just feel much more comfortable for the wrist and hand. Now, technically, I could rotate my whole iPad the same way, but that would probably look a bit ridiculous. So instead, I rotate the canvas all the time whilst drawing. For example, drawing this curve with the canvas completely straight feels a bit awkward to me. So I'm going to twist my canvas until the movement feels more natural. Even so I don't like this line, it does feel more comfortable. And you know what? Redrawing lines multiple times is completely normal. Thankfully, Procrite gives us the magic of undo and redo, which makes experimenting way less stressful. See how I am focusing first on the larger shapes. Once I've got this right, it will be so much more fun to start playing with the details. Talking about details, I remember seeing some really cute fabric decorations for this lounger. So I'm going to go ahead and try a few. For decorative details, I like creating additional layers. That way, I can test different ideas without affecting the main illustration. If you're going to draw stripes, it definitely makes sense to leave the photograph visible. Remember to rotate your canvas. I don't want you to end up this class with paint on your wrist. Okay, how cute is this drawing? The great thing about having done this in a separate layer is that I can turn the layer off and test a new decoration on a new one. Feel free to try as many decorations as you want. To keep things nice and organized, we're going to place all these layers into a group. To select multiple layers, simply swipe them to the right. And if you accidentally select one you didn't want, swipe it to the right again to deselect it. Once you've selected all the layers you want, tap group at the top, and a, everything is neatly organized inside a folder. If you tap on the folder, you can rename it and group the layers or flatten everything into a single layer later on if you need to. Once you're done, meet me in the next lesson, where will turn our lemon tree branch into a beautiful illustration. When you finish your illustrations, please share them in the project gallery of this class, and you don't have to wait until you finish all of your illustrations. You can create your project after finishing the first one and then update your project as you go. 7. Drawing the Lemon Branch: Once again, I'm going to lower the opacity of my reference image and create a layer on top. To keep a cohesive visual style across all my illustrations, I'm going to continue using the dry ink brush, but feel free to experiment with any brush you enjoy. Having said this, I would advise to keep a consistent style across your illustrations. The goal here is not to copy the reference perfectly. Instead, we're simplifying shapes and turning them into stylized illustrations. In fact, it's actually a really good thing if your drawings start drifting away slightly from the original photo. That is where your own style begins to appear. Think of the photo more as a guidance rather than something you need to trace exactly. Sometimes certain areas can feel too complicated or visually messy like this branching here. If that happens, you can simplify them. You can remove details, change proportions, adjust curves. You're the artist here, and you don't need to stay loyal to the original image. We're just borrowing the composition and overall shapes as inspiration. One thing I do recommend, though, is making sure your shapes are properly closed. Try not to leave small gaps in your outlines. Closed shapes make it much easier to drag and drop color into your illustrations later on. You will notice that this process becomes surprisingly fast once you stop worrying about perfection. We're creating playful stylized assets, not hyperrealistic drawings. Now that my shoid is done, I'm going to add a few tiny dots and marks here and there to create a little texture and movement. These small imperfections actually help digital illustration feel a little bit warmer and more organic. I didn't mention this, but I created the branch and these little details on a separate layer. So I'm going to open the layer panel and show you how to merge your layers. To do that, simply pinch the layers with two fingers. Procreate will combine them into a single layer. If your illustration contains multiple layers, you can select several at once and pinch them together too. This will keep your files organized as your collection grows. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how I draw this pina cola. 8. Drawing the Piña Colada: Time to draw the pina gelada. As always, I'm going to start by lowering the opacity of the reference image and creating a new layer on top, just like we did before. To keep my collection visually cohesive, I'm still using the same dry ink brush and roughly the same brush size. I'm going to begin with the larger shapes first, starting with these two diagonal lines and using the trick of leaving my penda. I'm going to loosen things up a little bit for this bottom part and simplify the basic structure. Now, as I said before, the trick of leaving your pendum also works when drawing circles and ovals. So for this top part, I'm going to draw an oval, leave my pendum and see how it has become perfect. You can take this further and tap on the ellipse word up here to align the sides of your oval to the lines of the glass. When drawing the straws, I'm going to give myself the freedom to invent them a little bit rather than copying them exactly. For me, it is more important that the glass feels sturdy and believable. Of course, if you want a more exaggerated or playful style, you can absolutely push certain proportions or simplify shapes even further. Okay, now that the main structures of our illustrations are finished, we can move on to the most fun parts of the process, adding little details, texture and personality. 9. Adding Details & Personality: At this point, our three illustrations already start feeling like a small cohesive collection, which is honestly really satisfying to see. Of course, feel free to keep creating more objects and expanding your collection as much as you like. But for now, these three illustrations are already enough for us to start practicing the tools, experimenting with details, and having a bit more fun with the style. This is the stage where the illustrations slowly stop feeling like traced references and start feeling much more like your own artwork. Since we've just finished the main structure of the pina cola, I'm going to start adding some extra details to it. Using a smother brush, I'm going to add little dots of texture here and there, a few extra lines and small decorative marks. This stage of the creative process is really fun as there is no stress on getting things right. By focusing on the larger shapes first and moving on to the details later, you can start infusing your personality onto your illustrations. And look how with just a few tiny additions, the illustration already starts feeling much more interesting and alive. Okay, to keep things organized, I'm going to group my layers and move on to the lemon branch. Using the same smaller brush and making sure I'm working on a different layer, I'm going to add a few details. At this point, I'm starting to feel like the pressure and smoothing settings are making my lines a bit too stiff. So I'm going to quickly turn the motion filtering down again. Remember that you can do this by going to the action spanel, going to preferences and tapping on pressure and smoothing. Lower the effect and you're good to go. One thing you'll notice is that I'm no longer keeping the original photograph visible all the time. I've mostly turned the reference off now, and this gives me much more freedom to invent small details and experiment a little bit more naturally. And this is really the moment where the illustrations stop feeling like traced images and start feeling much more like your own artwork. Okay, this is looking very cute, so I'm going to open the layer panel, group these layers, and move back to the lounger. I know that we had tried a few decorations on separate layers, but I think that we can still work this a little bit further so that it style fits nicely with the other illustrations. As always, I'm making sure to be working on a separate layer so I can experiment without affecting the main illustration underneath. For example, I quite like the dash line in between the stripes, and I'm also using little groups of lines in areas where the objects overlap to suggest shadow and depth. Usually the elements sitting behind another one will naturally appear a little darker, so adding a few simple lines is an easy way to communicate that. You know what? I'm starting to notice that these decorative lines feel slightly too thick compared to the rest of the collection. And when line thickness change too much between illustrations, the overall style can start feeling a little bit less cohesive. So to keep everything feel visually connected, I'm going to lower the opacity, create another layer on top, and withdraw them using a thinner brush. As you can see, this is one of the reasons why working on layers is so helpful. It gives you the freedom to adjust, refine and experiment without having to restart your illustration. And another great thing is that then you can activate the layers to compare the difference. In this case, I actually prefer the thinner lines. Okay, now that our drawings are ready, I'm going to show you how to start adding a few areas of colors, and I'll keep sharing some extra procreate tricks and features along the way. 10. Adding Colour to Your Illustrations: Okay, now that our illustrations are finished, I'm going to show you how to start adding some color to them. We're going to keep things very simple and continue working with layers. By doing so, we can keep experimenting without ruining our drawings. At this point, I like cleaning up my file a little bit and deleting any layers I no longer need. I'm also going to duplicate this lounger group just in case I want to test different patterns or decorations later on. If you're following along, please flatten one of the two. Now, to start coloring, we're going to create a new layer. At the moment, it's difficult to know which layer is containing the drawing because we did it with a dark gray. You can rename your layers if you want to by tapping on the layer, selecting rename, and you can give it a name in there. We're going to add color on this new layer, and I prefer keeping it underneath the drawing. To color your illustrations in procret, you simply have to drag your active color onto the canvas. Right now, the color is flooding the entire canvas because this layer is empty. What we want is for Procrit to use the drawing above as a guide whilst we color underneath. To do that, tap on the drawing layer and select reference. This will tell Procrite to detect the closed shapes from that layer, even if we're coloring on a different one. So now when I drag the color in, it stays nicely contained inside the illustration without affecting the original linework. Now, when you drag a color into a shape, keep your pencil pressed down on the screen for a second. You will notice that if you slide your pencil left or right, a percentage bar appears at the top. This is called the color threshold. Basically, it controls how much of the surrounding area procret fills with color. If the threshold is too high, the color might slip outside your shape. And if it is too low, you might end up with little white caps around the edges. So usually you just want to slide your pencil left or right until the fill looks nice and clean. See how now if I open my layer panel and make my drawing invisible, the layer below has taken the drawing as a reference to keep the color contained. Once you have filled one area and adjusted the threshold, you can continue filling and quickly color multiple sections using the same color by tapping always adjusting the threshold so that the color is contained where you want it to be. That's all the color I'm going to give to my lounger. So I'm going to open my layer panel, group these layers, and why not rename my group? Since I'm starting to lose daylight, there is something I want to show you. I'm going to quickly switch my interface to light mode by going to the actions panel and under preference, toggle on the light interface switch. Since we're simply repeating the same steps, I'm not going to narrate the process for these lemons. But while coloring the pina colera, I run into a small issue that you might come across too. After setting the drawing layer as a reference, I started filling some areas. On the straws, I only want to color part of the straw pattern. But when I drag the color in, procreate fills the entire shape instead, and that is happening because my drawing is split across multiple layers. If this happens to you, you simply have to open the layer panel and merge the layers that contain the linework. Now when I drag the color in, it stays nicely contained where I want it. You can also use the eraser tool if there are any small colored areas you want to clean up or remove. If you want, take some time organizing your layers into groups. And once you're done, meet me in the next one, where I will show you a few easy and fun ways to experiment with color in procreate. 11. Easy Ways to Recolour Your Artwork: My goal with this class is to introduce you to as many useful procre tools and tricks as possible without making things feel too overwhelming. In this lesson, I'm going to show you a few really easy ways to recolor your illustrations and experiment with different color combinations. Before we start experimenting with colors, I recommend duplicating the procret file from the gallery. To do so, tap gallery, swipe left on your artwork and tap duplicate. This will allow you to freely test different color combinations without worrying about ruining your original illustrations. You can still drag the active color to recolor your illustrations. But what if you want to quickly change an existing color without repainting the whole illustration again? This is where the alpha lock becomes really useful. To activate the Alpha log, either tap on your layer and select Alpha lock from the dropdown menu or simply swipe the layer to the right with two fingers. You will notice a little checkered background appear behind the layer thumbnail. That is how you know Alpha Lock is active. What Alpha log does is the transparent areas of the layer, meaning any changes you make will only affect the artwork that already exists on the layer. If I tap on the layer and choose fill layer, Procreate will instantly recolor only the visible artwork instead of filling the entire canvas. I had pink as my active color, but you can choose any color that you want. This makes experimenting with color combinations incredibly fast and fun. The fun part is that you can also recolor your linework the exact same way. So you can start testing colors of different styles and moods very quickly. Another really useful way to modify colors is through the adjustment panel. Tap on the little magic one icon and open hue saturation and brightness. With the hue lighter, you can quickly shift through different colors so you can visually decide on the one you like. Saturation controls how vibrant or muted the colors feel, and brightness lets you make the artwork lighter or darker. This is one of the easiest ways to test different color palettes without repainting everything from scratch. Now you can also combine the alpha lock with brush tool. I'm going to activate the Alpha lock option of my pina colata. And, for example, I can select a slightly darker version of the same color and start painting certain areas to add a little more depth and variation. One important thing to remember is that when Alpha lock is active, you can only paint on areas that already exist. So if suddenly you notice that you can't grow outside of the existing shapes, simply deactivate Alpha lock first. See that now, I can go back and paint in areas that weren't there before. One last quick tip. If your color drop suddenly starts behaving strangely, it's because probably another layer is still set as reference. So always make sure the correct drawing layer is selected as the active reference before coloring. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to add a white background to your illustrations before exporting them into your image gallery. 12. Adding a White Background to Your Illustrations: I hope that you had some fun recoloring your illustrations. I'm going to go back to my original ones because I really like how simple and graphic they look at the moment. Right now, these illustrations have a transparent background, which is completely fine. But sometimes that can become a problem if you want to place them over darker colors or different backgrounds. So let me show you a really quick way to add a solid background behind them. For this, we're going to use another useful Procreate tool, the selection tool, tap on the selection icon up here and make sure the automatic option is selected. Now, tap on the background area. You will notice it becomes highlighted in blue. Just like when using color drop, you can slide your pen left or right to adjust the threshold. The higher the threshold, the more areas Procrit selects. So simply adjust it until the whole background is selected cleanly. You can also tap on additional areas if needed. Right now, the background is selected, but we actually wanted to select the illustration itself. So tap invert at the bottom. And now our illustration is selected instead. Next, open the layers panel, create a new layer, choose white or any color that you want, and tap Fill layer. This instantly fills the selected illustrations with a solid color. And now simply drag this layer underneath your artwork, and there we go. We now have a version of the illustration that works much better on darker backgrounds or colored surfaces. I'm going to repeat the same process with my lemon branch. Automatic selection, adjust the threshold, invert the selection, create a new layer, fill it up and place it underneath the artwork. Once you understand the logic, the process becomes really fast. And now that our illustrations are properly prepared, we're going to export them and start using them for patterns, stickers, mockups, Canva projects, or any creative project that you like. 13. Exporting Your Illustrations: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to export your illustrations and start building your own image library, basically a folder where you keep reusable illustrated assets for future creative projects. Let's start by exporting our illustrations with transparent backgrounds so we can later use them in Canva patterns, stickers, social media, and lots of other fun projects. First, you got to make sure that the background layer is turned off so the background becomes transparent. Then making sure you have the version of the illustration that you want to export visible, open the actions panel, go to share and select PNG. Then simply tap Save image. I'm going to repeat the same process with all my illustrations before heading over onto my photo gallery. PNG files preserve transparency, which makes them perfect for reusable illustrated assets, and a great thing is that they preserve their quality over time. And now if I open my photos up, you can see all my exported illustrations saved in here. One thing I personally love doing is creating a folder called Image Library, where I store all the illustrations I create, whether they're for professional projects or simply just for fun. Over time, this becomes an incredible useful collection of assets that you can reuse across all sorts of projects. You also don't have to export only one final version of each illustration. Sometimes I export colored versions, linework only versions or slightly different color variations. Experimenting with multiple versions can lead to really fun results later on. So feel free to export as many variations as you like and upload them as part of your class project. I would absolutely love to see what you create. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you a few fun ways you can start using your illustrations in real creative projects. 14. From Illustrations to Stickers: Okay, so by now, you should have your beautiful illustrations exported as PNG files with a transparent background sitting nicely in your image library. And today, I want to show you a few fun ways to actually use them because here's the thing. Your illustrations are way too beautiful to just be sitting on your iPad. Let's start by opening WhatsApp. Open a chat and tap on the Imog icon. Usually, you will open your recently used Imoges which appear under an icon that looks like a clock. On the left hand, you will find an icon which looks like a folded circle, tap on it. Will open this window where you can start creating your own stickers. To do so, you will have to tap on this icon here and you will access your photo gallery. If you've imported your illustrations into your iPhone, they will appear in here. Tap on the illustration that you want to turn into a sticker and tap on the plus icon, and this will add your illustration to your Whatsapp emojis collection. Now, I have found some illustrations to work better than others. If it's a complete object, it usually works well. But if you're importing text or illustrations like this sun, which has single sticks, it doesn't work that well. So I invite you to experiment with different illustrations and see which ones work well. You can add a few effects to your illustrations by holding them down and tap on at effect. Down here, you can add an outline, you can add a puffy effect or a shiny effect. Now let's open Instagram. I'm going to tap on story and select this silly Selfie I took the other day on an elevator. In here, you have to tap on the icon that says stickers and then tap on Katats. This will take you to the photo gallery where you can select your sticker. Tap on use sticker, and this will appear on your story. Some stickers tend to work better on Instagram What's Ap, but once more, I invite you to experiment with the ones that you make and let me know what do you think. If you make Instagram stickers, it would be so much fun if you can tag me at sylvispina dot art or slaspina dot creative, so I can get excited, see them and share them with my followers as well. Many of my classes, I teach how to create standalone illustrations that you can turn into stickers. As you can see, I have been adding loads of them into my gallery, and I love decorating my stories or sending them to friends once in a while. If you're ready to keep going in from Procreate to Canva, I'll show you how to turn your artworks into printable designs, mixing your illustrations with text to create wall art, greeting cards, social media graphics, printable calendars and stuff like that. You're interested in seamless patterns, I also recommend taking my class patterns in Procreate, supercharge your workflow with an image library. You will learn a simple method for building repeats, the key fundamentals for designing successful patterns and how to visualize your work on products. 15. Final Thoughts: Congratulations on finishing the class and for getting all the way until the end. I'm really grateful for that. I hope that this project and class helped you feel more comfortable using procreate and showed you that creating this type of illustrations doesn't have to be overwhelming or overly complicated. One thing that I personally love about digital illustration is that every single drawing that you make can slowly grow into a collection of reusable creative assets. So a small sketch can later become much more. It can become a sticker. As I showed you in this class, I can become a pattern, a social media graphic, a Canva element, or part of a larger illustration collection. I would really encourage you to continue building small Illustration collections inspired by places, objects, travels, holidays, nature, or anything that captures your attention. The more you create, the more naturally your own visual style will begin to develop. If you enjoy this class, don't forget to upload your project to the gallery. I absolutely love seeing your work, and it also inspires other students to start creating their own projects, too. And if you like to continue learning with me, you can also check out my other Procreate classes, illustrations, and pattern designs here on Skillshare. Thanks so much for taking this class, and I will see you in the next one. M.