Transcripts
1. Quick Intro to the Class: Hi, I'm Lisa. As a full-time illustrator, I'm always on a hunt to find apps and tools that really help me in my workflow and that I love using. One of those apps is Procreate. Throughout this class, I'm going to show you how I use Procreate to enhance my picture drawings by adding texture and dimension to my work and that save me hours of studio time. I'll take you through my workflow that's simple and effective that you can easily shape to suit your drawing style or project. We'll be applying these techniques to create a self-portrait based obviously on yourself, or a friend, or your imagination. This class is perfect for anybody who enjoys using illustrator, but we'd really love to be able to harness that hand-drawn quality that Procreate offers. A little bit of knowledge of Procreate and illustrative is needed to get the most out of this class. By the end of this class, you'll learn how to partner, procreate with illustrator without compromising the fancy nature of your artwork. I'm so excited to show you how you can shape this technique to suit your drawing style and use as much or as little of this technique in your artwork. So let's get started.
2. Equipment Used in the Class: For this class, you'll need; an iPad, Apple Pencil or stylus, Procreate installed on your iPad, and Adobe Illustrator on your desktop computer. You'll also need a reliable way to transfer files that could be anything like a drop or you could Dropbox it to yourself. But it does need to be something that is fairly reliable that can handle large files because we'll be transferring a PSD file. And for the class projects, you are welcome to take an old drawing and use that as your inspiration. You can take a photograph of that and actually bring it into Procreate. Of course you can follow along with the class project that I'll be creating which is just a goal from my imagination. You can [inaudible] go on the person shall say on yourself, or just somebody that you have come up with your imagination. Let's get stuck in.
3. Choosing the Correct Canvas: Once you're in Procreates on your iPad, you want to go ahead and create a new canvas. The thing with Illustrator that you need to remember when it comes to the Auto Trace function, which is what we're going to be using a lot in this class, is it the larger the image or the higher the resolution the better the results. You don't want to start off with my new 72 DPI image that's like 10 mm by 10 mm that's just not going to give you good results. I recommend that you use something that's no less than 300 by 300 mm, or even the 3,800 by 3,800 pixels I like to work in mm because I have a graphic design background so that stuff freaks me out. I'll just stick to the mm and that measurement works great for me and if you'd like to create your own custom size, just come right down to the bottom click "Create Custom Size" over here, you can change millimeters, centimeters, inches, whatever you feel comfortable with and I would recommend at least 300 DPI. Just remember, the higher your DPI and the larger your size your layers come down, the amount of layers that you are permitted to work in. I have found the 300 mm by 300 mm at 300 DPI actually works great because that gives me, I think it's about 12 layers. That works fine for me. I'm going to go ahead and select that and that's going to be our starting point for our illustration. In the next class, I'm going to talk a little bit about brushes and how to make your life easier when it comes to choosing them.
4. How to Avoid Brush Overwhelm: I'm sure by now you've noticed that Procreate comes with a huge amount of brushes. Not only that, you also have the option of buying a whole lot of brushes that are on the market are there. All of that can really become overwhelming and confusing, I know. When I first started using procreate, I just didn't know where to start, I didn't which brush to chose, I felt quite overwhelmed, and I ended up actually spending way too much time choosing my brush before I actually even started drawing. So what I've discovered along the way is to actually create a bare-bones library. Well, when I say library, you're under collection. So what happens with that is, I literally keep it down to say six to eight max brushes in there, and that is actually my starting point when I start creating anything on my iPad. What I've included in the resources for this class is a downloadable PDF, which is actually going to show you all the brushes that are used for this class, and none of them are purchase brushes. They come default with procreate, which is great and you don't have to spend any extra money, which we always love. So, I'm going to take you through the ones that I'm going to use in this class. Of course, you're welcome to use your own state, but I do recommend, choose six, don't go higher. If you do decide to add another brush to your bare-bones library that you have, then I suggest you actually remove one, so you keep it down to minimum amount. So the brushes I'm going to be using in this class is a 6 B pencil. The artist crayon, the reed, shell brush, gesinski ink and dry ink. So if you want to create your own bare-bones library, just click on the little plus and up pops a menu. Let's just call this class, and then from there you can literally drag and drop. I'll show you how to do that. If you're going to use the built-in default brushes, you don't need to duplicate. It's automatically duplicated when you drag and drop into your new brush library that you've created. I'm going to show you how to do that. So I'm just going to grab the 6 B pencil, and then we just wait for that to open up and drop. As I mentioned, I've already created a bare bones. You of course can call it anything you like, but the bare bones is a good reminder for me. I hope that gives you an idea that you don't need any fancy brushes, and this is a good way to avoid overwhelm. In the next class, we are going to start sketching out our character. See you then.
5. Sketching the Character: I just want to talk a little bit about why I use this technique and how its actually going to benefit you in your work. The great thing about this technique is that you can go really grungy and have lots of texture in your vector work or you can go just have a basic textured outline and then color that in Illustrator. You can decide how much grunge or texture you actually want to add to your work so that's what's really nice about this. It has so much scope for you to play with and the more you get used to actually incorporating Procreate with illustrate, you'll see how much fun you can have with it and how you can push it. For me it saves me so much more time because before I would try and actually create all these texture things by hand and then of course scan it in and then vectorize. Whereas now, I can actually see the whole piece digitally on Procreate and then from there I can actually vectorize in illustrator, so it's really cool. I just want to quickly take you through why it's important to experiment with the brushes and know what they going to do in Illustrator. As I mentioned, there's a downloadable PDF in the class project that you can use for reference, but just to quickly show you some of the brushes that are use. For example, the 6B pencil is really great for outline work and the artist crayon I often use for large areas, and you can just imagine when we bring that into Illustrator. That illustrator is going try and pick up all those little grungy bits, which is the whole point. We want to actually add some texture to our illustrations in vector format without too much effort. This is a good way to achieve that. Then I've given you also an idea of what I use each one for, which is quite handy because instead of having to try and figure out stuff on your own, this is a good starting point. For example, the shell brush is fantastic for big areas and then of course, little detailed areas depending on how much you push down on your Apple pencil. Things like that is really fun to experiment and figure out and for example, I'll show you again the dry ink. Let's just zoom in there. If you can imagine, the lighter we push, the more texture it's going to show. Once you vectorized that, the idea is, you want to pick up all those little bits and bobs because it's that texture that's actually going to add the interest to your vector drawings because vectors can often have that flat, non hand-drawn look. I mean, that's obviously something that you want to go for that's great, but if you wanting more hand-drawn look to your work like I do, then this kind of thing is really handy for the end results. We're going to start drawing our character with just some rough sketches. Just going to clear that layer because we don't need it. I'm just going to choose my 6B pencil. Just make my art board slightly smaller. Now, if you can remember, I mentioned the bigger the drawing and illustration, the better results in Adobe illustrator. Your first sketch now doesn't have to be large because this is just the base and we can enlarge it if we want to if we realize it's too small. I'm going to draw a little girl with her dog as a friend and I'm just going to start with basic shapes just to give our character some shape work. It doesn't have to be complicated. I don't want you to freak out about the detail of your drawing because that's not the point of this class. The point of this class is to show you how versatile this actually is for illustration work. I've just added a body, its actually just tall dress and then just some legs. I'm going to give her a little cute feet and she'll probably be in the boring socks. Just put her hands behind her back. That's my little cheat for not having to draw hands and I'm just going to add a little outfit for her. Again, this is just a rough and the nice thing about digital work, you can go back, you can erase. Oops, this is moving. Doesn't have to be perfect the first time. We've got lots and lots of go's to get it right. See, we just have to be rough, doesn't have to be perfect because this is our base. She's going to have little pumps on and I want a little pockets because pockets are cute. Probably want her eyes about there. I always, not always, but most of the time for some reason, choose to draw either pigtails or side buttons. I don't know why, I don't know what my obsession is. She's probably going to just have glasses because I wear glasses. I don't look like this as you know, but there’s certain things about her that is like me and we just need to draw her little friend. I’m going to start with a rectangle that has a bigger side this side. This little guy is looking up to her. Again, just basic shapes. That's the thing with drawing. If you’re ever feeling overwhelmed, just break it down into basic shapes because you'll be amazed. They read it like most things really are. In fact, everything is a shape and there's a basic shape under everything. It’s just getting used to identifying that shape. I'm actually just going to tilt his head even more. When you get the hang of figuring out what the shape is, your life just becomes so much easier. I'm just going to undo that given some detail. I hope you can see this. You can see it's not perfect and it's just a rough because that's the idea. Because now this is our base of our next drawing, our next phase, which is just kind of refining it. As I mentioned previously, you can actually take a photograph of a previous work that you've got on paper and you can actually import it into Procreate and actually work on that as your base. I'm going to actually enlarge her because I want them to be as large as possible on this art board. All I've done is I've come over to the Free Transform tool and I'm just literally increasing the size if it will let me. Let's just bring her down a bit. That's the base of our drawing and in the next lesson we're going to start to defining our character. See you there.
6. Refining Our Character: Now we're going to actually start refining our character, and we still want to use a 6 B pencil. But now this line work is going to be the cleaner line work that we're going to bring into Illustrator. I'm just going to go over to my layers panel. I'm just going to click the plus because I want a new layer, and I'm actually going to name it, and I have to tell you is quite important to name your layers and you'll see why later on, it just makes your life so much easier. So I'm just going to hit rename, and I'm going to call this outline. Make sure you still on it. We just want to bring down the opacity of this one, because we want to actually be able to draw freely, but still see this as a guide. Okay. I'm just going to zoom in. I just want to mention that I particularly I'm going to have the hair on a totally separate layer because I want to actually color that completely differently in Illustrator. The secret layer is going to help me and make my life so much easier. I don't have to use any lesser tool to select it. I'm just going to actually basically do her body and address and her little friend. We're just going to increase the size slightly, the nice thing about this technique, which is why I love it so much, and I think you will too, is that it is extremely forgiving, and the rougher you are the better. I mean, obviously within reason, but you don't need to be perfect and that's what makes this so amazing and fun. Because who wants to be perfect when they draw stuff for fun? You can move down to her little dress. You see all those little extra lines that I'm creating that all adds to the sketchiness with the final piece. As I mentioned, you really don't have to be perfect. I'm just going to give you a little stitches on its pocket for cuteness, and add a little arms that was a bit rough. I just going to delete that, and a little high socks. That wasn't very nice. Getting somewhere. The same with their glasses. I'm actually going to put those on a separate layer because I want them to be a totally different color. I forgot to mention that you want to be using a dark color at the stage. In fact, we're going to be using a dark color in all stages because the darker the color, the better results in illustrator. If you use a lighter color, that just means you have to push the threshold a lot higher, and that may not be the results you want. So just bear in mind that you need to use a dark color. You can use black or dark gray. What did we choose? Just needs to be dark. I'm just going to put her a little eyes in, and a little nose. The nice thing about vectors we will know so we can easily make changes like, if you're not happy with the eye placements now, you can of course, easily select that when we vectorized and move them around. You don't have to be too perfect at this point. You actually don't have to be perfect and any point come to think of it. That's why I love this technique so much, its a little ease. Lets do his little leggies, I need to do his color, something like that. Bear in mind, you'll see that, that area is quite dark and solid. So that will be dark and solid in Illustrator. This area is more sketchy. So you might start getting little bits that fade in this area. As you drawing, try and be aware of that. But at the same time, that's the whole beauty of this method, is that you're going to actually get all those lovely little imperfections and that's the whole point. We want it to look hand-drawn and not so perfect, and his leg and his tail. At this point, I just want to mention what you could do. You could literally import that now into Illustrator, and just use this as your hand-drawn outline and then of course colorize it and illustrate using the pen tool or the blob tool. Whatever your usual method is, and that's great. You can literally stop here if you wanted to. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to push it all the way, and I'm going to show you how much texture you can actually achieve in Illustrator using procreates. I'm just going to finish up here. So in the next class we are actually going to start adding areas for the color. I'll see you there.
7. Creating Textured Shapes: This is going to take a little bit of getting used to and getting your head around it but once you have it, it'll be super easy. Sorry, as I mentioned before, we need to use dark colors. At this point, basically everything is going to be a dark color that you see. That can actually be confusing to work with it initially, especially trying to figure out which area you are actually working on at the stage. For example, the skin will be one layer, the little dress will be another layer. So that's why layering is so important and why naming is so important so you don't get confused. The other alternative, what you could do is actually use lighter colors, but then you will need to actually use, for example, the hue and saturation to actually darken it, before you bring it into Illustrator. Because as I said, Illustrator is not going to read that well. So I'm not going to be doing that, I'm actually going to be using the method that I use because I think it's best for you to get into that habit. Of course, if you find that you can't get used to it, then you can go with a method I mentioned. So I'm going to create a new layer. I'm going to call it Skin. The thing with layers, of course what you can do is you can combine them. So for example, I'm going to use this layer for her skin, and I'm also going to use the layer for the little dog. So we're going to go over to Artist Crayon. Actually, I'm going to use a shale brush ally and make sure we still are on a dark color. I'm just literally going to bring down the Streamline. That's better. The reason why I brought down the Streamline, because it was set for calligraphy work, which has a lag and I don't really like that for illustration. So I'm just going to do that. I just have to check that I was still on skin. The rougher you are those are the results you're going to get in Illustrator. You're going to be hearing a lot from me saying, it doesn't matter. You don't have to be perfect because you really don't have to be perfect. We can always fix anything in Illustrator. That's why I love it so much. So for his little face, I actually want a little bit of bits coming out. That is a bit rough. You can think about, do you want to add spots for him? If you do that, that would be a new layer. You could really go quite rough if you wanted to. Use the Pencil Tool and do little striking bits like that. For some more interest. Okay. So that's our skin layer on the dog. We're now going to move on to the dress. Rename it. What I'm going to do is just turn off the Skin layer otherwise I'm going to get really confused. At this point, I think I'm going to try the artist crayon and see what kind of results it gives me. Go right over the pocket because the pocket is going to be on another layer. I'm actually planning on adding a little pattern to her dress. So I want the texture, but I don't want too much because it might be a bit too busy with the pattern. But I do want some rough edges. So I'm just going to be doing something like that. I have to tell you that as much as I've been working with this technique, the fun thing is that I don't always know how Illustrator is going to necessarily deal with that. But I have a broad idea, and the nice thing is that two things can happen. One, it's like surprise and it ends up being really awesome or if you really don't like how Illustrator has actually read that shape, you can always come back because you're working on layers and actually fix it up. I'm going to use the same layer for her socks. Use the shell brush because I'm doing finer work. Too big. It looks good. Now we're going to do the pockets and her top of the dress. I'm just going to speed this up, so you'd have to do this and watch me. I'm also going to steal this layer to actually include her glasses. I'm going to come over to my brushes, choose 6B Pencil. Zooming closer. Then just literally, I wanted quite rough because I think that's what makes it cute. So almost child-like. I'm just making easy loose brush strokes. So at this point, let's just turn all the layers on that we've done. You can see we've pretty much covered everything except for her hair. I've left her hair separately because I think that we can add even more interest if we do it separately and I'm going to show you exactly how to do that. I'm just going to turn all of these off. Not that one. Rename this Hair. I'm just going to say Hair One, because this is actually the first one of the hair layer. This is going to be the base of my hair. Well, it's going to be the main color, should I say. I'm going to use a combination of brushes. I'm going to start off with my 6B. I'm just going to put the skin back on because I want to see where that actually falls. I just want to bring down the Opacity so it doesn't overpower everything. You can see now we've got a bit of room to play with. I'm going to start by just using very loose strokes. I know at this point it looks like a mess. But there is a message in my madness. We want a messy look in this particular piece. But at this point I'm actually creating a lot of the outline, sort of strokes that you see. Then over here, comes down like that. On the back of her face. She's got like little squiggly bits, very messy bun. Maybe you add squiggly bits here. Then I'm going to pop over to my "Shell Brush." Just bring up the size a bit. Now we're going to fill in some of that detail. We're still on the same layer, so I'll show you. As I mentioned, this is my base color over here, and in this case it's actually going to be orange-red hair, type of color. Just going lightly. Going back to my "Pencil" for some more detail. More little strands sticking out. So that's our base. I'm going to bring the opacity down, so I can see what I'm dealing with. Now we're actually going to work on the detail of the hair. So I'm going to rename that "Hair Detail." Come over to "6B." That's what I wanted. Now I'm going to add in some detail line work. Now I'm going to actually add some sort of highlighted areas to bring in some interests. Let's do that. I'm going to turn that off add a new layer call this; "Hair Highlight." This we want the "Artist Crayon." And just basically, if you can think about hair it catches in areas the light. I'm going to redo that because this brush is too small. I want more texture. So we're just going to do areas that basically where I think the light would catch. It's probably going to catch bun over here and over here. I just have to mention you could do exactly the same thing as I'm doing for her dress. You could add highlighted areas which you can use in Illustrator later on. But I'm just going to keep it simple so that you can follow along just for the hair. You'll see what I mean when we're in Illustrator. All make sense. I also want to add cheeks. This is actually a good layer to do that because I'm going be using the same brush. So the other thing I want to mention: If you're going to group things on the same layer, just bear in mind, rather use the same brush. So for example, if I did her skin and the dog, I used the same brush because when we trace then we can use the same settings. If for example, I use the Shell Brush for her skin, and I wanted a really rough texture for the dog, for example by using the "Artist Crayon," then that's probably not advisable because the two brushes would need different settings. You can copy the actual layer in Illustrator and redo it twice, but it's not ideal and it starts getting a little confusing. So rather, if you can just stick to the same brush on each layer. Again, this might all sound quite confusing, but you'll see exactly what I mean when we bring this into Illustrator. So I'm just going to come back here and do some cheeks for her. It's probably something like that. Now comes the tricky thing for some people. We going to add "Shadow" and this gives a dimension to your drawing. You can skip this step entirely, not everybody likes adding shadow to their work because it takes it up to a more realistic look. You know, you can keep a drawing flat with no shadow. But I'm going do that because I want to show you exactly what I do in my work and you can decide whether you want to use it or not. So I'm going to do that as a separate lesson and you can decide to watch it or not if you want to, and yes, so I'll see you in the next lesson for some "Shadow Work."
8. Creating Shadow for Dimension: We're going to add some shadow details to our characters. We're going to create a new layer, like we did with all the others. Rename that, shadow. To assist myself, what I've done is I've obviously left the outline layer on because that's important. I've also just brought down the opacity of some of the other layers so I can actually see the shapes they create. This is going to be the guideline of my shadow work. The first thing you want to do with shadow work is decide where is your last source. Well, let's just first choose an actual brush. I'm going to use the dry ink. So I'm going to bring my light source from kind of this direction, which means that everything on this side of her and the little dog, is going to have a shadow. It includes sort of her pockets, and legs, and all that kind of thing. Don't overthink this too much it doesn't have to be perfect, but this just adds that extra bit of dimension to your actual drawing. Again, this is totally optional. I'm going to start with her face. She would probably have something like that. Her hair is going to give her some shadow on her forehead. I'm just going to give her nose little bit, and her chin will give her a shadow. There'll also be shadow on her little dress, and I'm going to include, but that looks terrible. I'm going to include some shadow here, and a little bit over there. They all will have shadow, and definitely her dress, and then on the pockets. The dress is going to kind of give her legs a shadow underneath, and as well as on this side there'll be some shadow. Again, it doesn't have to be absolutely technically correct. If you want it to sort of bring in some shadow work and do illustrations, this is a great way to actually achieve that. Of course, I'm going to give her some shadow in her hair. I'm going to add some shadow to our little pitch. There's probably a shadow under his eye, beneath here, and a bit over there. Okay, so the next thing we want to actually do as well, is add shadow under their bodies. This is a totally different brush that I use, so I'm going to create a new layer for that, and call it shadow under. I'm going to use the artist crayon because I quite like the effect that it gives. Oops, this are too big. Again, remember our light source is coming from here, so your shadow is going to be cast that side. So we just going to do a rough, it's not technically correct in terms of like scientifically correct should I say, it's just an idea. The same for this little guy. He's going to cast a shadow, that does that. You'll notice that I've gone right over them and the shoes and everything, it doesn't matter because in Illustrator we can actually layer each element and that's going to go behind. Okay. The last thing we want to do is now export to Illustrator. I'll see you in the next class.
9. Exporting from Procreate: The last step we're going to do now before we move into Illustrator is actually export the artwork. Before we do that, we just need to turn all the layers on and we just need to make sure that the opacity is at a 100 percent for each layer. I'm just going to do that and her hair. I think we're good to go. Then Come over to your little gear icon and you're going to click on the Share button and choose PSD. The reason why we're choosing PSD, because it's actually going to keep all those layers separately, which is exactly what we want. Then just choose your computer that you are going to be dropping it to. You can use Dropbox, but I'm going to Airdrop it to my Mac. That's it. We're going to now bring it into Illustrator and I'll see you in the next lesson.
10. Image Trace in Adobe Illustrator: Now that we've imported our procreate file to our computer. We want to open it in Adobe Illustrator. But I'm first going to rename the file so I don't get confused. I suggest you do the same thing. We just call this procreate girl. Now we're going to right-click on the actual file because I want to bring up the menu that says open with. The reason we're doing this is if we just simply double-clicked it would probably open photoshop. Or if we just dragged into Illustrator it's just going to bring in the flat image. So we want to retain all those layers that we've made. So I'm going to go over to my apps and I'm going to choose Adobe Illustrator and up pops window. It's going to ask you how you actually want to deal with this file. We definitely want to convert lays to objects and this is going to keep each layer separately. If you chose the others, it would basically bring in the file as a flat file which you don't want. I'm going to go ahead and say, okay. It might take a while. Okay, so I'm going to open my layers panel. If you don't have it up, you'll find it under Windows layers. Just going to close that. You'll see it's retained all the names, it's brought in all the layers separately, which is exactly what we want to do. Then we're going to start image tracing now. To make your life a lot easier, you're just going to hide the layers that you're not going to work on. I'm going to go ahead and do that and just start with the outline image first. First thing I'm going to do is actually select it. There are two ways of doing that. You can either just click on the actual image or you can actually use the target select tool in your layers panel. Okay, then I'm going to come over to my image trace. I have default image trace settings already saved. So I'm just going to actually use that as my starting point. Then I'll just talk you through the actual settings that I have. The threshold should be at this stage about 171. You could actually bring it up if you want the line to be a bit thicker. If you want to actually have more bitty bits and a sketchy look, you can actually bring it down quite a bit lets see what that looks like. Okay, you'll see we actually start losing detail. Maybe that's the look you're going for. But I'm going to probably keep it about 170, about there. The next setting, if your advanced, isn't expanded, just click on the arrow to the side. The next setting we're interested in is the path setting. So on this slider, you'll see if we bring it down too low, it's going to actually make it much smoother and take away all those little grungy bits that we want to keep, which we don't want. We don't want that effect. We actually want to keep all those little sketchy little bits and bobs. I'm going to bring it all the way back up. You can even go as high as a 100. The corners, I take it just over the halfway mark [inaudible] , it's not just about 60-70 percent because at this stage we want corners, but we don't want too many. I find that that's a sweet spot. Then of course, the noise, we want to actually have as much noise as possible. This picks up all the tiny little details in your sketches so you can bring it right down to one. If we took it to a 100, you'll see that it actually starts losing all those little extra bits that we do want to keep. So I'm going to bring it back down to a 100. Okay, so that's the general sort of settings that I use as my starting point. I've included in the download all the settings that I use to create those different effects of those brushes which you can download and just keep for future reference. I guess I'm just going to quickly show you how you can save this as a custom setting because this is going to be your base for all the others that we're going to actually trace. So if you come along to the side and you just click save as new preset, I'm going to call this grungy effect. You'll see that'll pop up in your drop-down menu and you can use that every time you want to auto trace. Okay, so we are happy with that effects and those results. So I'm going to go ahead and hit expand. Okay, so we're going to hide that now because we don't want to confuse ourselves and start tracing the skin. I'm going to come back to my image trace and come down to grungy effect. I just want to zoom in so I can show you all those little details that it picks up, which is exactly what we want. These rough edges, that's exactly what we want to now work. Again, if you can remember me mentioning, you can decide how much detail and texture you want. You can maybe in this particular instance, actually draw her skin with using the blob tool, which will be a smoother effect. But I particularly like the texture look in my work. So I think that looks okay, but I'm just going to experiment. You just bring threshold down a tad. You'll see it's actually basically added a little bit more white space. I think I'm actually happy with that. I'm going to go ahead and expand. I'm just going to go ahead and continue with the race and I'll see you back again when I tackle the head[MUSIC]. So this is going to be the base color. Let's just go back to grungy effect. I think that looks pretty cool. I'm happy with the results. This is probably going to need a higher threshold, so I'm going to push that up. That looks about right. Then highlight with the cheeks. Remember we added the cheeks to this layer. I know that it looks weird and scary at the moment, but that actually looks perfect for what we're going for. So with shatters, you can decide if you want to bring your file size down a bit and you don't want it to be so rough because shadows are hardly, rarely noticed. They are just there for an added dimension. So I'm going to keep my file size down by actually using a different setting for this one. I have a pre saved setting called ink line with detail. So basically what I've done here is I've just taken the path down a bit. We can even go further down. You'll see what actually happens here at the bottom. It will give you your path counts and your anchor points account and that'll give you an idea of how many nodes are being added to the path. So we could even go a dash more. You can see it's still retaining a bit of the detail because our noise is low and our corners are halfway. So it's still getting all those little extra detail that we want. But it's actually bringing the anchor count down quite a bit, which is what we want. I think that looks good. So I'm going to go ahead and expand. Then lastly, the actual shadow underneath. Now I actually do want a grungy look, so I'm going to go back to my grungy effect. You'll see we've lost quite a bit of the detail to the left. So I just want to up the threshold and see what it does. Yeah, I think that's looking a bit better and expand. Okay, so let's turn all the layers back on and there you have your vectorized girl. I know it looks nothing like an illustration at the moment, but we're going to go ahead and color in the next lesson.
11. Applying Colour to Your Drawing: Okay, at this point your document is probably an RGB that's because it came in from procreate. So, we just want to change that color mode and come over to file document color mode and CMYK, I prefer working in CMYK, but you are welcome to keep it RGB. At this point, I'm not going to resize her or any of the elements because we might want to make changes in procreate and when we bring the PSD file back in, then at least we know we have the correct size and we can just pop it on top. This is why it was so important to create all those layers separately because, now we know that everything is in the correct position and we don't have to do any manipulation or resizing or moving. Don't forget to save your document as you work and I'm going to go ahead and do that. The next thing I'm going to do is actually import some colors that I've already chosen. I'm just going to paste it and it should automatically appear in my swatches panel. If you're struggling to decide on colors, I recommend either looking at P-interest and choosing from there. I'd speak about this in my previous class and there is some reference that I've included in this class and the project areas. So, you can go ahead and have a look at that. But just some basic tips is that, I recommend that you keep your palettes really simple. I wouldn't go too many colors at this point, you can always recolor. That's what's great about vector work, is that you can recolor in the future and especially if you keep everything neatly in layers is going to be so much easier for you to edit going forward. Okay, so the first thing I want to do is actually add a background. So, I'm going to go over to the Layers panel and actually just get rid of that background block that was created because there's probably still a roster files. I'm going to go ahead and delete that. Then come over to my rectangle tool. Just click on the edge. I know it was 300 by 300. I just want to make sure, that it is actually on the 0 mark and you'll see it's actually not. So, I'm just going to go, 00 and I'm going to go ahead and use my eyedropper and pick this pink color. We don't need the second layer because that was our rough sketch, if you can recall. So, I'm going to go ahead and delete that. So, let's turn everything else off. So, we don't get confused. Now we're just going to recolor this outline. Come over to my swatches panel. I'm going to choose kind of a brownie color and then we're going to click the skin on. Let me just move this down to the background layer so we can see it. That I want white. If you wanted these two to be separates, you'd have to go into isolation mode, which I'm sure we're going to come across that later says, I'm not going to show you that now. So, I'm just going to keep going until we get to that point. Now your nurses are obviously the outline layer is underneath everything and we don't want that. So, I want to drag it to the top and we can even go ahead and lock that so we don't leave anything. Let's turn the dress on. The dress I probably want blue and you'll notice everything on that layer is obviously going to be the same color, so I don't want that. So, I'm going to go into isolation mode. I'm going zoom in. I'm going to use my less O 2, which is Q on your keyboard. Just to select the areas that I want separate. I'm going to group that, which is command "G" group that and group that. I'm going to come out of my isolation mode. Click on the whole group again, and then ungroup, which is under objects and group. Command "shift G." Now you have all your little bits and bobs grouped, but now they also separate for you to work with. Then we just expand that layer to show you what would happen, if we hadn't actually gone ahead and grouped everything? You'd be left with like a million paths and it would be so confusing. So, now least we have every item in one group. At this point, you are welcome to actually turn it into a compound path. What that means is, it's actually going to combine everything and make it into a single shape instead of having all these little parts separately. Generally, do that. I like to turn everything into compound paths. I'm going to show you how to do that. So, under your Path finder, if it's not open, you can find any window under your Windows panel. We just going to use the little flyout menu to the right and choose make compound shape and then I'm going to expand it and you'll see there is normal group anymore there are no more little parts anymore. It's just one shape and I prefer working like that, but perhaps you want to keep it as a group. And I'm just going to go ahead and recolor her socks, to be that and possibly these little color can be mustard. Okay. I'm going to keep going. Again, we have that situation where, everything is to get a group together which we don't want because we obviously want to color each things separately. So, I'm going to go into the isolation mode, use my Lasso Tool and group the whole group again. But now individually, they're all neatly grouped. [ MUSIC ] Okay, we are reaching the head detail layer. I'm going to choose a pink color, quite a bright pink and I'm going to come over to my transparency and choose color burn. That'll just give it a more intense color and a bit more vibrance to your illustration. But of course, you can decide to choose any color you prefer. The glasses we obviously want above. So I'm going to create a new layer for that by just clicking on this new icon. I'm going to name it glasses and then just drag it on to that layer and move this entire layer right above everything. It actually needs to be above that one and we can lock it to make sure that it actually doesn't move. For the highlight layer, we actually have the cheeks on the same layer as well. So, I'm going to go into the isolation mode and again, use my lasso tool, to group that and then group the other one, come out and group the whole thing and then this little guy needs to probably be something bright like yellow and then we need to just possibly bring it down to say fitty. You'll notice that, it's added just that extra dimension to the hair. So, that adds a lovely effect. I'm going to actually bring this below the detail because I actually want the detailed to be on top and a little cheeks we probably want this color. Yeah, is looking good. I think I want to move those glasses, a little lower because we want to see those little cheeks. Okay, so, now we come to the shadow layer and basically shadow is quite a fun way to add an unexpected dimension. You could actually literally make the shadow pink and I'm going to show you how to do that. So, if we decide to actually use that color and set it on multiply under your transparency and bring it down to say 20. You'll see how it's kind of added that whole another dimension of color to your drawing. But in this instance, I'm actually going to use a gray because shutter is generally a cooler color. Actually let me just show you what it looks like, if we use yellow, you will see that how the lovely effect is against the blue heart showing up on a skin. So, it actually ends up being quite a lovely additional sort of color introduction into your drawing, which is quite handy. Yeah, so let me show you what the gray looks like and that's probably the one I'm going to go with. Yeah, I think that'll actually works well, I'm might go darker, let's just have a look. Yeah, I think that looks better. In this instance there I actually think I want the shadow, of the hair to be a little bit different to the rest of her. So, I'm going to go into my isolation mode again. Again, use my lasso tool just to pick this out as a separate group. So, I'm going to cut that, which is command "X." Then I'm going to paste, but I need to paste it exactly where it was. So, I'm going to go command "F" and group that so that we keep everything together and I'm going to try and see what this bright pink looks like. I think that's too dark. Let's try the blue. I think the blue is quite interesting, but it is a bit dark. So, I am just coming over to my transparency again and just bring it down to 50. Let's see what the brown looks like. That's better. Okay. But too dark let me just bring it down again to 30. 20. I think 20, looks good. Now we're reaching the shadow under the image and this we actually want right at the bottom. So, I'm going to bring it right down and we want to select it. Again. We want to choose a shadow color. I'm going to choose brown. Say it will multiply, to say 20 percent. I just want to see what the gray looks like, might look a bit better. Yeah, I think I prefer the gray. There you have it, you've now added color to your drawing and illustrator and everything is 100 percent vector, which you can scale up and down, which is fantastic and of course it's all neatly organized into layers for future editing. The next thing I want to show you is I'm going to add a cute little pattern to her dress and possibly turn this little guy into a pattern that's super quick and fun. See you in the next lesson.
12. Adding Character Details: We can add a little pattern to her dress. I'm going to go ahead and turn all the layers off Editor once. Then I'm going to create a new layer and call it pattern and just zoom in. I'm going to use the Artist Crayon and I'm going to create little diamond shapes and we're going to separate them when we're in Illustrator, but for now I'm not going to worry about that. The main thing I don't want to do is touch those triangles with each other. So make sure that you keep them separately. That's going to make your life a whole lot easier. To make sure that we stay within the dress, I'm going to come over to my dress layer, turn it on, and then I'm going to select, come over to my pattern layer, turn the dress off, and you'll see it has selected the actual dress, but now we're going to be drawing on our Pattern Layer, which is really handy. What that means is I won't go outside the actual dress. You don't have to do this. If you want more of a rustic look and you don't mind things going over the side of the dress, that's fine. You can actually skip that step. Make sure we are on our right, yes we're on the right brush. That's way too big so I'm going to bring this down. I'm just going to go ahead and create little diamond shapes. Again, as I mentioned, making sure that they're not touching. The reason for that is, it's going to make our life a lot easier in Illustrator when we select each triangle. I'm just going to go ahead and finish the rest of it. See you on the other side. Of course you could have literally just drawn one and then duplicate it. But I think this way is quite sweet because it gives you that extra hand-drawn look that we going for. I'll see you back in Illustrator. I've opened my file up in Illustrator the same way I did previously, where I retained all the layers as individual objects and images. You'll see that it has only imported the layers that were visible in Procreate, which is great. You can see I had layers on that I could have easily turned off, but that's fine. We only interested in the Pattern Layer at this point. So I'm going to select that. I'm going to come over to my image trace, use my ready preset effect, or setting, saying should I say? You'll see why I created everything individually, because it just, as I said, gives it that extra hand-drawn, authentic look. I think I'm pretty happy with those results, so I'm going to go ahead and expand. I'm going to copy, which is Command-C. Come over to my girl layer. I'm going to create a new layer and call it Pattern, just to keep everything neatly and separately so we can edit it in the future, and then I'm going to paste in front. What's going to happen is that it'll paste it exactly in the same position that it came from. You'll see why that's important because then we don't have to move anything. Basically, the computer Procreate and Illustrator has done everything for you. Paste perfectly in the position that we want. I'm just going to bring it above the dress layer and you'll see the pocket is in front, which is exactly what we want. Now what we're going to do is, we're going to go ahead and use our lesser tool and individually select each one. I know this may seem a little tedious, but the results are great. I'm going to go into the isolation mode and using the lesser tool. I'm going to individually select each one and then group as I go. Grouped and ready to go. I'm going to go ahead and ungroup the main group and just quickly choose a color so that we can know what we're dealing with. That array looks super cute, but I'm going to randomly select the diamonds and recolor them to add an extra dimension to the pattern. There you have a cute little pattern that you've created for her dress. The next thing I'm going to do is actually create a little pattern out of this guy, and I'll see you in the next video.
13. Bonus: Create a Quick Pattern: If you can recall, the skin and the little dog was on the same grip,so what we need to do is actually extract that from the skin layer. I'm just going to go into the isolation merge, using my lesser tool again and select that. Then I'm going to cut it, I just want to create a new layer and call it Dog and then I'm going to paste in front and the same thing for the outline, because obviously we want the outline of the little dog. I'm going to go in. Each time I go in, I'm just double-clicking. Then I'm going to cut that and click on the little dog leg because that's the layer we wanted on and paste. Then I'm going to grip and the same thing for the shadow and with the shadow, you'll notice when we paste that is probably going to lose the transparency that we applied, but let's just paste and grip and we can always reapply that. Bring it down to 20, make sure we're on the doggy layer. This needs to be on the dog layer. I'm just going to make sure that that's to the back. Actually let's take a shot as well, so the same with that. Cut that, paste, grip, and apply the same transparency and make sure that that is on the doggy layer and it's right at the back. You should know have all the elements you need for the little pitch on one layer and I'm going to go ahead and grip that into a layer. Okay, now that we have a little doggy gripped, I'm just going to create a cute little pattern, super-quick. Basically what I've done is I've dragged, and while I was dragging I held down my Option key, which is going to make a copy of the dog and then I'll do the same again. Then I'll actually want to borrow that, so I'm going to hit O on my keyboard, and just borrow that little guy. That looks quite cute and then with the blob tool, I'm just going to make a large little sort of polka dots and of various sizes. If you want to increase or decrease your size, you're just going to press the square bracket on your keyboard. I want to choose a white color,so the same color is his little fur, let's go back there and another one over here, a big issue one there, and some small ones. Just randomly dotted them around and then I'm going to go into the pattern tool which is under object, pattern, make. I'm just going to zoom out to see what it looks like, I think that looks pretty cute. I'm just going to hit done and now I just want to taste the pattern so I'm just going to draw a shape and then fill it with a color, let's just choose blue for now. I just want to make a duplicate, because if you can recall, we actually don't have a background on this pattern. I want the blue to be the background for this pattern just to test it. I'm going to make a copy of that, paste it in front, and then full that with the actual little pattern that we just made,and that's it. A super-cute, super-fast pattern that you created with one of the characters you just drew. In the next lesson, I'm just going to quickly show you some more examples of what I did using exactly the same method with my other illustrations and some final thoughts. See you then.
14. More Examples and Final Thoughts: I just wanted to show you another example of an illustration that I did using the exact same technique that I've just taken you through. This time, I used the other brushes like the reed brush I use for the stems, and gesinski ink is really great for petal work or leaf work and just to zoom in, you can see all the lovely details that we've managed to retain. This is a really great way to add texture to vector work without having to fuss over brushes and importing textures from different sources. This is like a one stop shop for texture work. Then of course, because it is a vector file, you can quite easily turn it into a pattern like we did with a little pitch. This is another way that you can transform your work and upload it to sites like Society six-week and sell pillars and shower curtains and cell phone cases. Basically this technique can be used with any vector work, which is quite exciting. I hope you had fun in the class and enjoyed watching the process. I'd love to see what you create, so please do upload your projects so that we can all see your lovely work that you've created with this technique. Thanks for watching. Bye.
Lisa Glanz, Illustrator & surface pattern designer
