Lessons

Lesson Info

Paper Cut Demo: Line, Color, and Scan

I'm going to go ahead and finish doing the line outwork outline work on this with the brush and some black gua so pretty much the same process we did this morning exactly the same way we did this morning and you might find that, um, you you might have some correcting to dio when you scan if you're doing the brushwork after you do the pencil work because you need to make sure that they line up in the tile. So once you scan this, there might be some correcting that you have two d'oh to be aware of that, and now would be a great time to ask some questions. Um, since we've all seen me do the coloring already once, if you have questions about some of the things that came up with our guests or anything else you're wondering about absolutely let me take a look back on our questions on maybe for some folks who weren't with us at the beginning that day on this question just came in from luisa, do you always do your line work in black, or do you change it afterward, like the blue poppies for the...

class image? Yeah, exactly. So that was started in black, and then I went on to color it in photo shot, so yeah, sometimes I will do more work and photo shop and than other times and that it's nice to have that black line because you can in your original artworks because you can change it pretty easily and I would color the the same way so what you could do is scan you know you could still color on the black line of a page that's been printed out it might be a little confusing but you would do you would scan your black line work and keep that as original file and erase all the white background so that it could be a layer of just leinart and you can put that layer once you've changed it into it's like so for example with the image for the class title there at what I did was I um I over laid the leinart over the colorized interior so that you have that that liner it's exactly the same so it's just you khun layer it and photoshopped and create a new image with different colors so the line it was blue and whatever color I put between the black lines created a new image it's a little confusing but if you understand photoshopped you probably understand what I mean um but you can always experiment and try you know overlaying different different images to see what you can you know different color versions or coloring the line and then laying it over um other colored in like solids in between the line if that makes sense and see what it looks like so when I get to the edges, I'm trying really hard to be, um to stay exactly to the pencil line so that when I scan this into photo shop, I hopefully have very little correcting to do just quickly try to go over all this in the chat rooms who's saying I'm loving this course, I have ideas for making stock drawings original without trying to paint in photo shop so very helpful. So is that some another sort of area of potential revenue for people online? His is there a whole market for stock for design like images? Yeah, and I don't know I've never done anything with that so that's exciting to hear so you would it would basically be like stock photo are clip art that you would be licensing? I would imagine that's what they make it sound like today sounds like a good opportunity, so this kind of a bigger question, but well, while you're working from el burton and we had some votes on this one as well, what re sources or skill development do you think would be most important for designers who don't have a formal art training this person's degrees in communications doesn't have a buffet? Can I do design work without that kind of training? Absolutely I would look at um lisa condon as an amazing example of someone who took there you know left a corporate job for and you know I mean you know how to be leaving corporate corporate job to become a designer without training but you know, I think my uneven my example I mean I was I did have some formal art education a lot of it but but not necessarily in design which makes me feel self taught in that sense so you know, I think if you're interested in it and passionate about it then you can figure out ways to fill in the gaps and I think I don't think any artist that I know feels like it's such a subjective career I think that it takes a long time for anyone to call themselves an artist for whatever reason because I think you there's no riel you know, you graduate and all of a sudden you're a scientist because you have a b you have a science degree it's not I don't think it really ever quite works that way and which has some roll it rolls into our definition of success and all of that and I think if you're interested I would pursue it and whether it become something that you start by doing on the side and in your evening and free time and then if it starts to become clear that you could make a living off of it than transitioning that into something that you do full time you know, I think that like anything else you know you have to weigh a risks with with what your needs are and figure out how how it could work but I think it's there's a sort of ten thousand our theory in the world so like by the time you've done anything for ten thousand hours you've kind of got it down and I think there's a lot to be said for just just this straight up in intense you know, time of practicing anything and I highly recommend just starting and not worrying about where it goes from from the start and I think uh, commercial success doesn't isn't always my definition of success anymore like I think that's something that we tend tio um that's the art world isn't doesn't you know, visible success doesn't always equate financial success and I think that's an interesting thing to understand you know, I still have tight months and I live in a very small house and my husband has a consistent income and my business is starting to get there but even after all the time and energy I put into it it's not it's not a steady is you know or secure as someone else's day job might be and I thought I'm ok with that and I've talked a lot about that with my husband and what we're okay with and when it when it's not working for us you know like what what we what we what we would describe that as but I think my watching my mother's career develop she's a painter as well, and she has never had much of a commercial career like she's never shown much in galleries and she's sold some of her paintings, but not consistently, but she has had a a studio practice my whole life. I mean, she went to art school, she has continued to paint through being a ah farmer's wife and and working on a farm and now, you know, moving on to another career, and she still paints regularly, and I think that in my opinion, she's one of the most successful artists I know because she's continued a studio practice sort of against all odds and I I think if you can, if you couldn't develop a practice in any way, then you're you're that much closer to making it something that could be a fulfilling life if you want it to be um and I think lisa condon's book and she just had a class with creative live and san francisco thatyou could also look at that's a about this very thing, and I highly recommend a recommend her book, art inc onda also recommend her her creative life class if you want to speak to that, absolutely so her classes called become a working artist with lisa conked in and you can that's spelled c o n g d o n you can just search on our web site for her name, and drew will drop that link in the chat rooms as well, but really, really wonderful class again about this topic and becoming a working artist and all the challenges that that people face and also a lot of support hand ways to take that step. Take that leap with really love talking about here, create a live I want to just say, give a shout out to garden dog molly, who said, really great point she's making right now you have to create your own definition of success, and I think that's really true, especially in this field, and I think that has to do with your own definition of what a good, you know, like I remember being told that I wasn't going to make a good living and and it was by someone who, you know was was in a teacher role for me. And if I continue to do, you know, some of the things that I was trying to do is a studio potter. And they were someone who had, you know, a nanny and a big house and like a very different life style than what I was looking for, and I felt like so maybe in your definition of what life should look like, that might be true, but I'm okay with living in a seven hundred and fifty, square foot house and having one you know, simple payments and not having a huge you know? So I think it just you really think you have toe just take yeah the bull by the horns and define it for yourself and fantastic beautiful really great conversation homes turn with the black part now the big questions air coming in do you ever suffer from self doubt? How do you deal with that? Yeah, all the time I mean, I think this class is actually really good example in all my initial conversations about the glass like I've never taught this material before, this is something totally new I usually teach ceramic workshops, which are really fun and I love doing those and I could do them in my sleep almost at this point, which not not totally they're always a little bit different every time, but yeah, I think, you know, I think any time you're being pushed or challenged your like, can I do this? I don't know and like I was saying earlier I have I had so many new experience experiences in the last year and I think I have a really good support system and my husband and my my family and and in the artistic community meeting lisa condon last week for the first time who I've been you know, getting to know via via email finally meeting her in person was amazing and, you know, just reaching out to people and who are good sounding boards and and also just sometimes you know, I mean what's the worst case scenario of today if I failed ethically like what would that look like? I mean, I think I would have to, like pass out on the floor something it on and have some I you know, I've talked in public before like I kind of you know, I should be able to do this and I think we sometimes let fear get in the way of what we're capable of and I grew up in some ah summer camps in vermont on dh I think that summer camp you know, mentality of rising here potential are pushing your boundaries with safety nets is always like a really important thing that I fall back on and I think, you know, letting fear get in the way of something, you have to have reasonable risk, you know, like you don't want to be jumping off a bridge and not have a steel safe, but I think you couldn't assess it and push yourself pretty hard more than you think and I think having a kid actually helped me understand that to be honest, like I don't need much sleep as I thought I did e I mean I need to read, you know, region regenerate occasionally, but I don't have quite a cz much need for sleep as I thought all right, so I'm a racing yeah, lots of ropes courses and like trust falls in my childhood, you know? No, I think you know, like rock climbing I think is a really good a metaphor or like learning pushing yourself athletically I think you know, we set goals for ourselves and we think no way I'm never going to run ten k and you do it and you're so impressed with what your body could do if you just set your mind to it and I think I think that's the same for any career too I think you know you if you met you could manifest whatever you set your mind, teo I think within limitations I think you know certain things aren't for everybody and I think you have to be good at reading what's going on around you and tueting what the responses are and be really good at taking feed like aiken rivers of criticism come through me, you know, between clients giving me feedback and learning how teo abduct if I like objectively observed what that is and not take it personally and there are still times when it's hard but I think you know learning how to deal with all that is I mean it's definitely easier said than done um but I think it helps when having gone to graduate school I think was one of the major um players and me learning howto stick to my guns and what I'm passionate about rather than worrying about what else someone else is thinking about what I'm doing so I'm gonna I have now erased I think everything and I'm just going toe photocopy this rather than going through the steps of scanning for our time um in the interest of time when a photocopy my magic fun I'm gonna photocopy the pattern and then I'm gonna hand color it, scan it and then well I'll just plug it into photoshopping a repeat and we'll see what it looks like all tile together and then I'm gonna walk you through how I make a photo shop repeat from scratch so have a little cleanup from those shadows in the in the pattern from the um from the cut make sure I, uh it's not didn't photocopy quite put it more in the middle um those are all really good questions I think you know, everyone struggles with them in their own in their own way I think you just have to be a little bit gutsy and a little bit daring and be okay with putting yourself out there and what's the worst that could have yeah, and I think also I think if you have integrity right like in what you're doing like what I was saying earlier about if you're putting out there what you feel like needs if you like, when I recently got called by a client to do some design work for like a lamp and rug collection and and I was like, oh my god, that was so great we need curtains in a rug and lamps in our bedroom and that's how I approach to the problem it's like if you could redesign your living on what would you do? And so I think it's the kind of thing where like I said before, if you're if you're designing for your own tastes most likely other people are going to have a similar take you know, like it's not like we aren't islands really were we are part of a larger world community, so we have shared interests on biff you can play into that then that I think, you know, most likely you're going to find your group of people who are going to be willing to buy what you're and maybe they're a small group of people maybe they're a huge group of people if you're lucky so I'm just going to do some quick color here I'm gonna d'oh not too complex because I wanna again keep us on time so some yellow and my and photoshopped you can clean up that cut line like I wouldn't like normally in my scanning I would, um scan this and then I would, um go into the black and white file before I printed it out again to color it and erase those lines so in your original black and white leinart file rather than photocopying I would print out like I did before this morning print that out and then you'd have this a lot line here that's subtle probably on screen but it would be really you know stark in any repeat pattern that you did two before coloring that would be the time to do that and I'm gonna keep this relatively symbols pattern I have this amazing lily of the valley of my home that is like a purple color like a lab in very purple color really unusual and I think I'm gonna make like a blue green for the and I'm not gonna actually fill in the color of the leaves fill it and just a little bit like with a wash here and I feel like some of the like my understanding of color really that's where my art school training and some of my early practices are common handy from my undergraduate degree um understanding pain and color and um I think that's something worth studying a little bit if you can it was on color here on creative, huh? How did they encourage you if you are new credible I've to check out our full catalogue of courses you can look at the five different channels that we have and check out not only all the upcoming courses but all of those great catalogue courses think over five hundred and growing classes that we have it's amazing um so when I met the edges of the paper, I'm really being careful in my coloring that I'm not, um that I'm not going over the lines because that's where I'm gonna lick save myself the cleanup work later but I can go over the lines and be a little bit messy in the rest of it, which is kind of nice because that's where the handmade like watercolor look come comes comes out and again that depth that we talked about in the first pattern of the color being, you know, layers of color being involved makes it so much prettier and what you can do even with a watercolor brush in photoshopped think it's really coming to life here, I think this really like was better maybe I should design while I'm talking more often look forward to seeing that in anthropology and yeah, maybe right here on the lot well, maybe I'll go back and make cem more society six products with this pattern that would be so cool people can buy what they saw me make love and if you weren't with us earlier society six dot com is a really cool site where artists thousand thousand is of artists where you can post your work and have people on demand purchase whether it's iphone cases or as molly has their her computer top skin thank you. Laptops can bags all sorts of things t shirts. Yeah, I mean, yeah, car like stationery, they do stationery and they do all right almost done. Yea, um there's gonna color that one, but yellow I forgot earlier. All right, so, um, from we went from here to here kind of amazing, but the beautiful thing now is that, like you have this original, you could make a cz many copies or scan to scan and print out as many and make multiple different color ways. So for my fabric company, if they said, oh, my gosh, yeah that's really cute, but we really don't like the color then I'm not like, oh, god, I have to start all over and recreate that I don't have to I can just use this. Um so now I'm going to scan this my computer and I'm gonna drop it into a photo shop same way we did before making an eight by eight tile and then, um we're gonna scan it with color and when you do more color like this, you're going to end up with more of that sort of, you know, like rippling in the paper and things is and again, like sometimes you with a list of your photo shop skills, you khun, you can avoid that being a problem, but you can also, um, try scanning it on. You are try printing it on the paper that, you know, the thicker paper. If you don't like the idea of having to deal with that, some scanners are better at dealing with that than others. So I'm gonna drop this into photo shop and again it's off kilter. I wonder if it's just merely something about try scanning it again? Just yeah, how large do your files typically run when you start making these repeats? Because I find that when I make patterns, my file sizes get astronomical and really bugs down. My sis. Um, yeah. I mean, I try to keep everything in dropbox was I'm working. I keep it off my desk top because, um yeah, it can get really pretty out of control pretty fast, but I worked with the eight by eight. Repeat, basically. So, um I can make them larger or smaller, but I don't tend to like send them I don't need to send them anything larger than the eight inch by inch file, because or whether it or, you know, if it's a two intrepid eyes, and then the two inch because that's going to get tiled, that's the repeat that tile, so just send them the one bring it as opposed to sending them like a, you know, a bigger large mural to it to wrap right unless it's something that restricted by the like. So the wallpaper company that I mentioned earlier chasing paper that is that that companies so fun, they so I'm going to make some adjustments here with levels. Try to get that color a little bit better. Um, a little more true, making it a little bit darker and the whites whiter, helping one of it want to blow it out too much. Sometimes I find that I need to do more than others but that's pretty good. I'll take it like the wallpaper company that I was working with. They needed me, too dio uh, two foot by two foot panels that would snap together so they were engineering it basically so any time you have something engineered, then you're working on a two foot by two foot panel they want the tooth a bit and that was a pretty big file but you just kind of you work with it, all right? So I'm gonna try to do what I did before, right where I'm fitting this into eight inch by eight inch looks like it's just a little bit bigger than a giant pain in crap he's a little bit tedious, but sometimes sometimes computer work is tedious um and figuring out exactly where got it and again, I could do some work to fix it. Um with some of the drawing tools in photo shop, but that's pretty close I'm gonna try that again. I'm gonna remove this top layer and see how much I'm missing seems like quite a bit, so maybe in my you know, when I was doing my, um when I was doing my, uh measuring it wasn't quite right doesn't really unfortunate, but you know, what can you do? Yeah, it doesn't have to be perfect, right? We're trying so I'm I'm gonna touch select this, I'm going to make a new andi, we're going to go inches, we're goingto sixteen we're gonna try this again the blocking so that we can see it and ominous put this in and we'll see how this snaps together to make us repeat looks pretty good so there's, a little there's, a couple of spots and so that's. This is where testing it out, you know, you can start to go in and make some of the adjustments that might need happening on and again, some of that could be cleaning up, but so, you know, now I can see that that edges a little bit off for I colored that green accidentally, you know, like I can play around with it again. I I think once those central lines that we're seeing in a couple of the smaller spots that aren't working are are corrected, then that would be an amazing repeat on its own, right, like the heart of it is there and there's something about seeing that in person on paper, and then translated that like, it works so much differently than if you were to do this on on all on photo shop like I think I'm responding to the paper and the scale of the paper in a way that you couldn't do in the screen in real life.