how to Archives - Page 26 of 31

How to Create Delicious Donuts in Illustrator

After the Lovebird and Watercolor Popsicles tutorials, I had a few requests to create more illustration-based tuts (if this is something you’d like to see more of, please let me know!). Last week, Tamara made a request for a donut tutorial which I thought would be fun, plus it incorporates quite a few useful techniques I find myself using all the time. So! Even if you don’t have an appetite for some digital donuts, I promise you’ll walk away with something you’ll use many times in the future. In this tutorial, we’ll create 2 different versions of typical donuts in Illustrator utilizing the blob brush, scatter brush, paint streak textures and clipping masks. Let’s get started!

August 18, 2015

3 Comments

Branding, Business, Personal, Tutorials

Bulk Print DIY Business Cards Using Illustrator

Happy Tuesday! This week’s tutorial comes courtesy of Jodie who asked a great DIY question I think will help a lot of people. Personal business card printing can get pricey pretty quickly if you’re looking for anything better than a paper thin glossy card (ick). I’ve DIY’d every personal business card I’ve ever made. Yup. And you know what? Even fancy shmancy design studios loved em. So say you’ve designed up a killer card design in Illustrator and don’t want to be wasteful with your paper. Say you also have a back of the card designed that you need to match up to the front when you print on your home printer. What’s the best way to make the most of your paper and have things work out perfectly front to back? In this week’s tutorial, I share how to bulk print DIY business cards using Illustrator to print 8 cards, front and back using one sheet of 8.5″x11″ paper. You can also use the same method in InDesign if you’d prefer using that instead. Let’s go!

August 11, 2015

11 Comments

Hand Drawn, Illustrator, Tutorials

How to Vectorize Hand Drawn Doodles

Happy Tuesday! This week’s tutorial is brought to you by Whitney + Monica who both emailed asking how to vectorize hand drawn doodles so they would have reuseable, and infinitely rescalable vectors. You’ve probably seen vector artwork around a lot lately – I just released a pack of vectors a few weeks ago and gave 5 of them away for free. In this tutorial, using that vector pack as an example, I share how I took those hand drawn elements from a doodle on a sheet of copy paper to a crisp vector that can be used over and over again on any application. Do you remember the how to vectorize hand lettering tutorial? If you’ve practiced that at all, you’ll be in great shape with converting doodles 🙂 In this video, we’ll go over 3 different methods of cleaning up your doodles, so whether you’re a beginner or advanced Illustrator user, there’s an option that will work for you. Let’s get started!

August 4, 2015

25 Comments

Branding, Color, Illustrator, Products, Tutorials

How to Vectorize Watercolor Textures

If you took my Watercolor Branding Skillshare class, you learned how to digitize watercolor textures – from scanning them in, to color adjustments, to removing the background correctly so they could be placed on anything. When a watercolor texture is scanned in, you’re limited by the greatest size and resolution your scanner is able to scan at. For large applications (think billboards, signage, posters), if a professional scanner wasn’t used, resolution is likely too small for the texture to reproduce as crisply as you might wish. Enter vectorized textures. Since vectors (which are point based instead of pixel based) can be rescaled infinitely without losing quality, they make a great alternative to finding a high res scanner and going through the process of color editing + removing the background again. Watercolor textures are super detailed, so finding a happy medium with file size and a similar outcome to the raster (pixel) based image is key when vectorizing. In this tutorial, I share my exact method on how to vectorize watercolor textures using two different textures. We’ll go over what to look for when you vectorize your own.

July 28, 2015

34 Comments

Branding, Color, Tutorials

The Watercolor Branding Challenge

Happy Friday! I just wanted to post a quick notice of a Watercolor Branding Skillshare session I’ll be hosting for the next two weeks starting this coming Monday, July 27th and ending August 7th. Sessions are new to Skillshare, so I’m very excited to be a part of some of the first ones! If you love learning new things, but need a little more structure with completing a project associated with what you learned, sessions were made for you.

I’ve laid out a full schedule and I’ll be sending emails every few days so we all stay on task to complete the project of creating your own watercolor logo. These emails will ask you to complete videos from the Watercolor Branding class and then post a small task to your project. I’ll be available for questions, feedback – whatever you need to ensure you come out with a great logo and some skills you can use well into the future. You’ll also be with other students who will offer their feedback and will be posting their own projects. Since this session is paired with the Watercolor Branding class, it means every student in the session will receive a free mini watercolor kit, a resource pdf with every asset mentioned in the class, as well as a logo inspiration cheat sheet to keep the ideas coming. This session is a great way for all of us to collaborate together and have some fun with watercolors 🙂

July 24, 2015

4 Comments

Freebies, Illustrator, Patterns

Freebie: 4 Geometric Illustrator Pattern Swatches

I was going to say a few months ago, but I just checked, and last year (holy moly), I shared some geometric photoshop patterns. They’ve been downloaded almost 20,000(!!!) times, so I thought it might be time for some Illustrator ones! This week’s freebie is a set of 4 geometric Illustrator pattern swatches to use on whatever you please 🙂 I’m also sharing some quick tips + tricks on using them you may not have heard before – read on to see!

July 23, 2015

3 Comments

Business, Tutorials

How to Create an Editable PDF File

A few weeks ago, Kori emailed me asking how to create an editable pdf file. If you’ve ever browsed the template files on Etsy, chances are you’ve come across files for sale that come as editable pdfs. This is cool because you can offer a design file to someone who doesn’t have the programs and they can still work with and edit them to some degree. This is also useful to know if you ever need to send a client any kind of form you’d like them to fill out and send back – same rules apply – which eliminates unnecessary printing steps for the client. In this tutorial, I’ll share how easy it really is to create your own editable pdf. We’ll take a design created in Illustrator and transform it into that editable pdf using Adobe Acrobat. If you don’t have Acrobat (it’s the professional version of Adobe Reader) you can try it out for free for 30 days here. Let’s get started!

July 21, 2015

17 Comments

Color, Hand Drawn, Hand Lettering, Photoshop, Tutorials, Typography

How to Create Chalk Typography Without Chalk

Happy Tuesday! Chalk lettering is still going strong these days, from outdoor signage, to indoor wall murals, to photographed magazine ads. But! What if you want a digital, more permanent and quickly editable outcome without all the mess (or dealing with the perfect lighting setup for photography)? There’s actually a super quick way to accomplish a chalk typography style in Photoshop in just a few simple steps. In this week’s tutorial, I share my exact process of taking a nothing-special pencil doodle or sketch and transforming it into white chalk, then colored chalk typography. Use this same method for illustrations too! Whatever you can doodle, you can change into the digital chalk look, and in only ~10 minutes! Try doing that with real chalk 😉 Let’s get started!

July 14, 2015

8 Comments

Branding, Color, Freebies, Tutorials

Create Your Own Custom Watercolor Logo

My new Skillshare class, “Watercolor Branding: Create Your Own Custom Watercolor Logo” is live! This class was close to a month in the making, and I’m so proud of how it came out! In the class, we go step by step in the logo making process, from establishing what our brand is, brainstorming brand attributes, then applying those attributes across the brand. We finish our logos off with a hand drawn vector element and some watercolor texture to bring our final logo to life. Because of how vibrant watercolor textures are, we finish the class with logos that will be definite attention grabbers on social media, blogs, online shops, stationery and so much more. As a bonus, everyone who enrolls gets a free mini watercolor kit so you can begin experimenting right away without feeling like you have to create a bunch of assets first 🙂 I also just released my second watercolor texture kit, so there’s even more fun to be had!

Enrollment in the class also gets you a resources pdf of all the fonts mentioned as well as a logo inspiration cheat sheet to get started in the right direction. For my youtube subscribers + blog readers this week, I’m giving that logo cheat sheet away for free!

July 7, 2015

0 Comments

Color, Illustrator, Tutorials, Typography

How to Create Line Gradient Typography

Happy Tuesday! This week’s tutorial comes courtesy of Kamron’s request on how to replicate a line gradient typography effect, like this one. While you could create this effect in a similar way as this retro type effect tutorial in Photoshop, the blend tool in Illustrator performs the effect quicker (in my opinion), AND you end up with vectors that can scale infinitely without losing resolution. Win, win 🙂 This is one of the quicker type effects we’ve created, making it the perfect solution when you need a nice type effect in a pinch!

June 30, 2015

2 Comments

Color, Hand Lettering, Photoshop, Tutorials, Typography

How to Create Paint Streak Typography

I came across Pawel Norbert‘s paint streak typography a while back and completely fell in love with it. There’s so much color, so much energy, so much personality displayed in just a single letter. With the addition of the Mega Paint Streak asset pack I created a few weeks back, Pawel’s work came rushing back to mind, as it paired similar textures with my most favorite element of design: typography. In this week’s tutorial, I share how I would create a similar type of paint streak typography using Photoshop. Once created, we’ll add shadows + highlights to finish it off with some extra dimension. You’ll be able to use the artwork you create to either gift, sell as a customized art print, wallpaper your desktop, or keep it for yourself + display it on your own wall! Not too shabby for ~15 minutes! Let’s get started!

June 23, 2015

15 Comments

Hand Drawn, Photography, Tutorials, Typography

How to Create an Art Print Based on a Photograph

Have a photograph you love and wonder how to make it into an art print you could gift or sell? In this week’s tutorial (brought to you courtesy of Yasmin’s suggestion!), we’ll create an art print based on a photograph by taking a photo of an object and recreating portions of it in Illustrator. We’ll add some watercolor texture and even a nice quote using a beautiful brush script font. This is a quick way to practice your Illustrator skills and create something personal you could gift or sell at the same time! Start by picking out a photo of an object or use the same one as I am (link below) and let’s go!

June 16, 2015

8 Comments

Courses

Messy Watercolors in Procreate

Gouache Botanicals in Procreate

Learn Font Making

View All Courses