Procreate Setup

Using Procreate For Assignment 1

We need to make a custom brush for this drawing project, as Procreate doesn't really have one that's very good for this project.

Click on the + sign in the upper right and then click on the little + sign at the top right of the popup menu

This opens the Custom Canvas interface. Click on the "Inches" button on the keyboard at the bottom of the screen then set:
Width: 8"
Height: 10"
DPI (Dots Per Inch): 300

This opens a new Canvas of the right size. You may want to do this Landscape instead of Portrait, in which case, just make it 10inches wide and 8inches tall.

Click on the Brush icon at the top right side of the screen.

This opens up a list of different Brush Categories.

Choose the Inking category.

From the popup menu of individual brushes, select the Fine Top brush

Swipe on the Fine Tip brush from left to right to reveal the Share|Duplicate|Reset menu

Click on the Duplicate button to make a copy of the Fine Tip brush

It'll be called Fine Tip 1. Tap on it to open the Brush Studio brush editor.

The Brush Studio

Click on the Properties tab on the left side of the screen.

Click on the Maximum Size slider...

...And drag it from 1% to about 10%, then click on the Done button in the upper right corner.

You can rename it if you want under the About this brush tab.

You now have a custom brush. You can leave it there or tap-hold-drag it up into the My Brushes category

What we set was the variation in size of the brush that can be set with the Brush Size selector on the left side of the screen

Drag it up to about 32% for a good size pen to draw with. It will act much like a fine-point felt tip pen on paper.

Affinity Setup

From the File menu, choose New. In the New Document window set the Document Units popup to Inches, then sent the size to 8in by 10in and 300 DPI (instead of PPI, but they're reall the same thing)

Choose the Brush tool from the toolbar

Choose the Brush Panel from Menu > View > Studio > Brushes

Under Basic Brushes, choose #4 Round Brush

Use the right and left bracket keys to change the brush size.

aliased

anti-aliased

CAUTION: It's really easy in Affinity Photo to switch from a Brush to a Pixel Brush, which draws aliased lines. Every time you hit the shortcut key for Brush, it cycles through the different kinds of brushes, including Pixel Brush.

Photoshop Layers

Sample file khazarj_assignment01-02.psd.zip

Photoshop has a very powerful feature called Layers. Layers allow you to create layers of artwork one above the other. The great thing is you can use layers to organize your artwork, and even use it to change the way your artwork looks.

Let's look at what layers can do:

• You can change whose in front of who by changing their stacking order (layers at the top of the panel are in front of those lower down in the panel)
• You can turn their visibility on and off
• You can change their opacity and method of reacting to layers beneath it
• You can put a image to trace from on a layer, then do a tracing on a new layer in above it, then put an empty layer in front of that to do a finished drawing on
• ADVICE: Always draw on an empty, unfilled layer. Don't draw on a layer with solid fill of color (even white) on it
• ADVICE: Create a new layer for everything you expect will be in front of something else

Tracing Techniques

Importing source images

Editing source images

You may want to edit your image first, for example to align the vertical lines in the source image with the edge of the image. Use either the Lens Correction filter or...

...select the part of the image you want to align, drag out some guides, and use Menu > Edit > Transform > Distort.

Cropping the Source Image to the right size

• Choose the Crop tool in the Tools panel

• In the Control panel at the top of the screen, set the crop ration to W x H x Resolution
• Set the Width to 8in, the Height to 10in, and the resolution to 300 px/in
• Drag the mouse over the area you want to crop to and use the mouse to adjust (drag corners to change size, drag from inside the crop to change the position, or use the arrow keys).
• Hit the Enter key when finished. This will set you up with your source image at exactly the right size

Drawing Techniques

Short Lines

Here's a great tip when drawing lines, especially when tracing from a source image. Whether it's with a real pen or a virtual one: draw in short segments.

Do this
(the lines can leave a bit of space, touch, or even overlap a little)

Rather than this
Reason being that you tend to get off the mark when you draw continuously without lifting the pen.

Use Zoom and Pan

• Zoom is your best friend for doing precise work. Control/Command + and - keys zoom in and out.
• Pan allows you to be zoomed in, but move the canvas around to see different areas. Press the spacebar to bring up the Hand cursor which allows you to Pan (or drag) the document around

Use Rotation

Photoshop allows you to rotate the canvas you're painting on. You can do it with the Rotate View tool in the Tool panel (under the Hand tool).

Depending on your tablet, you can also set it up to control the rotation with the round dial Touch Ring on the tablet.

In either mode, the ESC key will put the canvas back vertically. Notice that you can map Zoom to the Touch Ring too. You switch between modes with the Toggle button in the middle of the Ring.

Brush Cursors

Photoshop offers different kinds of cursors for using brushes. Get to the options in Preferences. I suggest Full Size Brush Tip, especially when using larger brush sizes

You can bypass the Full Size Brush cursor by turning on the Caps Lock, which switches the brush cursor to the Precise cross-hair style cursor.

Choosing Colors

We will delve quite deeply into Color in Photoshop later in the semester, but for now, realize there are several ways to change the colors you draw and paint with.

The brush paints with the color displayed in the top color tab in the Tool panel (black as show here)

Menu > Window > Color

Color Panel Menu > Color Wheel

The Color Wheel color picker is very intuitive. Name a color and we can dial it in.

Menu > Window > Swatches

Lots of colors, but kind of limiting. Left over from an era when computers could only display 256 colors at a time.

Click on the color tab in the Tools Panel

Takes some getting used to...

Advanced Topic: Layers for Occlusion

Demo

Other Ways to Change Color: Clipping Masks

A clipping mask is a layer or group of layers to which a mask is applied. The bottom-most layer, or base layer, defines the visible boundaries of the entire group.

Select the layer you want to be colorized in the Layers panel.

The artwork in that layer will act as a mask that lets the layer above shine through. To make that happen, we'll add a new empty layer

The opacity of pixels of the line determine how much of the color will be visible when the clipping mask is applied.

Make sure you have that new layer selected in the Layers panel

Add a solid color or gradient to the layer

Right-click on the layer and choose Create Clipping Mask from the popup menu. (You can also use control/option click to set the clipping mask)

Mask applied.

It's also possible to use layer Blending Modes to set the line colors, but it can be tricky.