Monster Mashup (Watercolors & Photoshop)

Welcome to the wonderful world of fantasy creatures!

Eva Toorenent, your instructor today, shares a bit about herself, her artist journey and unique style in this video. You’ll also discover what’s in store in this amazing course and the different topics covered.

Before diving in, Eva will show you which art materials she uses in the course, and give recommendations of what you’ll need to follow along.

She’ll also discuss the pros and cons of both digital and traditional media (eg: watercolors) and the advantages of mixing the two! Exciting!!!

In this lesson, Eva addresses three elements that are essential to creating amazing artwork (sadly, often overlooked):

Inspiration
Get excited and passionate about what you are creating. Art should be fun!

Artistic Voice
Discover how Eva developed her unique art style and pro tips for finding your own!

Goals
Keep progressing as an artist by setting goals! Eva shares her goals as examples, how she makes them and gives advice on how you can do the same.

Using references and copying artwork: One is a MUST and the other a NO-NO.

Find out their key differences and why this is so important for artists. Eva shares good rules of thumb to follow to make your life easier. Sweet!

Next, you’ll move on the first step in creating your artwork: Mood boards! Discover the benefits of working with them to simplify your design process , how to set them up yourself and also get access to Eva’s very own, personal mood boards.

To get started, first warm-up those sketch muscles with a fun exercise. This helps tremendously to get into a creative flow. (Bonus: Get access to Eva’s personal playlist that inspires her while drawing!)

Then follow along with Eva, sketching out different ideas for your creature and further developing the ones with the most potential.

She’ll also teach you to think of the story that your artwork is telling, which is key to creating strong, winning designs.

It is said: reality is stranger than fiction. Having a good knowledge of real animals will expand your design skills for creating fantasy creatures!

In this lesson, Eva will demonstrate several easy exercises to help bring your other-worldly creature to life, giving it unique details, personality and characteristics, as if it really existed!

She’ll break down her artistic workflow in simple steps that you can easily follow. Creating a mythical creature from scratch will be a piece of cake for you now!

Let’s get down to painting! Hurray!!

Look forward to learning nifty tips and tricks to boost your confidence in working with watercolors, including how to prep your sketch, deal with mistakes, use best practices, adjust the colors and what to avoid.

By following Eva’s tried-and-proven workflow, you’ll set yourself up for success with this medium. Goodbye watercolor-induced headaches!

Time to take your illustration to the next stage: the digital realm!

Eva will guide you in how to scan your painting so it looks great on screen. She will help you prepare your workspace in Photoshop, set up a canvas correctly and show you the tools you’ll be working with to take your artwork to the next level!

You’ll also learn how experienced artists fix up and adjust their scanned artwork for a clean, polished look!

A huge advantage of digital painting is the ability to fix or change things in a matter of seconds (which would be very time-consuming or even impossible with traditional media).

Ready to find out the tricks to making those handy fixes fast? Eva will show you how in this lesson, including removing stuff you don’t want, moving elements around, changing specific colors, making parts larger or smaller and more!

Time to put pen to tablet and start adding fine details and fixing mistakes (faster and easier than with watercolors)!

Eva will guide you through this process of adding detail, color and enhancements in Photoshop to make your artwork really pop!

She’ll also reveal pro tips for painting the eyes, hair, skin and more! You’ll learn how to add highlights and shadow and maintain the beautiful texture of the original watercolors.

You’re almost done! Hurray! Discover how to add the final touches to your artwork like the pros!

These additions will help tie it all together cohesively, draw the viewer’s eye to the focus point and ensure the colors and light are balanced. Very important!

Now that you are done with painting, discover easy ways to help your audience connect with your design and remember it!

Well done on completing this course!