Welcome!
I’ve enjoyed providing each week a “Wednesday Warm Up,”— a day of usually quick drawing, inking, brushing as warm up to our serious art. I’ve been sharing a strategy to try each Wednesday using the iPad app ProCreate. I’ve decided to change it up a bit for a few Wednesday Wrap Up— a wrap up of my project tips for the past week or something I’ve learned that may also help others with the same #warmup4art hashtag.
Holiday Art Prompts
As a break from my review of the NaNoWriMo art, I’ve begun daily art from various prompts with my CLmooc friends. Each day we choose one from our several lists:
We post in a private FB group, but I also post mine on Instagram [42Sheri]. Please join in with the hashtag of one of the prompts and add #clmooc as well. You’ll find poetry and photography [ #silentsunday ] posts there as well. Welcome!
Quick, Fun Holiday Art with Every-Tuesday
For any holiday, I usually skim through the video tutorials of Teela Cunningham, known as Every-Tuesday since she shares a new tutorial every Tuesday! Her style in the tutorials is at once beautiful and also not difficult to achieve. They are also easy to adapt to your own versions, and she provides free swatches so that decision while learning is already made.
I’ve purchased several of her courses and commercial brush sets— each course providing excellent lessons in creating art designs in Procreate with how-to on use of her professional brushes. So far I’ve chosen five of her holiday how-to videos as lessons to adapt to my own for the December prompts.
My process is to watch the video, then adapt the drawn elements to my own, applying the suggestions she’s made.
One thing I do differently is to apply one or two texture layers on top before starting the design. The textures are painted in a medium grey and placed on blend modes: Color Burn, Linear Burn, or Overlay. I play around until I get the effect I want. Sometimes I duplicate a texture layer and rotate it 90 degrees to obtain better coverage, often with a new blend mode as well. I use textures from two sources:
- Freya [IG Freya Art Tutorials ] Texture brushes from her watercolor set [purchase required]. See about these texture brushes in her video.
- Jennifer Nichols [ IG Leila and Po] texture brushes, which you can get free by subscribing to her newsletter, found her on her website at Leila and Po.
Holly
Tella’s Season’s Greetings video provides holiday foliage, and I applied the holly and my own foliage in my version. She provides the snowflakes [Note: I have purchased the commercial license for her brushes].
Look carefully and you can see the effect of the texture layers. Texture layers add depth and brighten colors.
For this illustration I chose Freya textures and also added a bit of highlight and shadow. See the texture layers in the screenshot– at the top. In the holly layers, you will see the base leaf, and that is clipped with a layer above to create the darker half of the leaf, as Teela teaches in her video. I duplicated the base leaf twice– filling one white an one black. I applied a slight Gaussian Blur to both these layers, the white one creating a highlight on the leaf edges, and the black one [on overlay mode] creates a shadow.
Replay:
Poinsettia Bouquet
Next I followed very closely with Teela’s Flat Winter Florals video, adapting the pink flowers and foliage slightly, as well as the organization of the bouquet. Of course, I added the layers of texture paper above all. Notice the technique of two-colored leaves. There’s a lot here to apply on your own inventions– a wonderful tutorial.
Replay – in the replay you’ll notice I also take the time to fill in the places where the lines join the main stem, so it’s rounded rather than a “v” to give the stems a more natural look.
Candy Cane
Another prompt, Candy Cane, also is an adaptation of Teela’s videos, Candy Cane Lettering. I applied the strategy to create candy cane letters with the “O” as peppermints using my own organization, wording, and background, creating two versions of it. You will notice the holly and berries and hand drawn swirls. The stripes are from Brenda Bakker’s [ IG DekWebbel ]brush set she provides in her Stylized Girls Skillshare class. I also added a layer just above the background layer with white soft brush to lighten that area. Aren’t these letters fun?
Replay:
Ho Ho Ho
One of the challenges inspires lettering [like the Candy Cane letters above] and one of the prompts is lettering Ho Ho Ho. I’d just happened to receive a newsletter from Shannon Layne [ IG by Shannon Layne ]on how to create “Elf-abet” lettering. Her newsletter is for hand drawing them, but I applied the idea to the “H” of the phrase, while each “O” became ornaments. Almost all color is drawn with the dry ink in inking brush, except a few ornament stripes drawn with a monoline brush. Again, the texture layers, highlight layers, and shadow layers. Notice each bead of the chains are highlighted, shadowed, and have a shadow on the wall. The wall is one of the brush sets from Jennifer Nichols again– and the brushes for the ornament designs. Do subscribe to her newsletter or take her Skillshare classes!
Replay:
Holiday Foliage Greeting
Finally, Teela provided a beautiful “Creating Festive Flat Style Foliage” for a card for my granddaughter’s birthday tomorrow. Again, I added texture paper and changed the foliage and organization for my own design. The lettering is done by hand using the “Drawing Guide.”
Replay:
Try It
So, that wraps up this Wednesday Wrap Up. Prompts like those we find for CLmooc help inspire us to create art every day.
And– when you need a card or art to share with others, Teela Cunningham’s tutorials will provide a quick way to create them. On any holiday, just look through her videos and find one that fits. You can’t go wrong– with her videos on YouTube or Skillshare, or sign up for one of her courses— which provides you with the commercial license for the included brushes. Her hashtag is #procreateit so follow her in Instagram: Every Tuesday. I am so thankful for her gracious sharing of swatches and strategies. A wonderful way to learn Procreate, if you’re a beginner like I am.
I look forward to your sharing, and please continue to be a part of the #warmup4art series to learn and enjoy our work together! See my sharing at IG @42Sheri and Twitter @42Sheri.
I wonder, if I draw a line... 