Hey you! Yes, YOU. Grab that piece of line art you have lying around that's been gathering dust and let's start recycling! I want to show you a great way to create a mixed media art piece…

…and we will do that digitally!

Mixed media art refers to artwork which combines more than one medium. For example, a drawing that combines color pencils, watercolors and inks in the same canvas. Digital Mixed Media is no different. The challenge is, of course, to create what looks to have been done with many mixed techniques, and how to accomplish that with a stylus and a paint program. Well the secret is, of course, digital brushes which mimic the real thing! There is no shortage of digital brushes being sold on the marketplace today, but why buy when Photoshop has hundreds of built in brushes by the king of digital painting, Kyle Webster himself! The key is being able to control the brushes and customize them to do exactly what you need them to. If you want to learn how brush settings affect the look of the paint strokes, you may like this new course I am offering, Using Photoshop Brushes for a Mixed Media Painted Repeat Pattern… Colorizing Line Art with Authentic Painterly Techniques.

I will teach you how to enhance your existing line art into a digital mixed media design masterpiece. You can apply this to surface pattern design, as I have, or simply apply the techniques to any line art piece you have. Instead of starting from scratch, jump right into the fun of mixed media digital painting by working directly with a finished line art. This mixed media approach will free you up creatively and have you feeling inspired! Since you already have a finished drawing, you will be able to fully explore different creative outcomes. And with Photoshop and Kyle Webster’s brushes, this is made easy. It’s your choice! I have created this class as a follow up to the class Sketchbook Art to Final Repeat Pattern class, but it can stand alone as well. Enrolling in this easy-to-follow class will inspire you to create a wide range of digital mixed-media pieces using custom brushes, textured backgrounds, great color schemes, and all with your own line art. We'll explore how experimenting with new textures and colors, values, and many other factors, can improve that existing piece.

Throughout the class, I will be giving you tours of my own sketchbook practice, with natural media, and explain how it feeds my commercial work. Knowing how the real thing feels helps me do a better job with the digital brushes, and I know how to advise you to get the essence of mixed media work. This is a great introduction to painting in Photoshop as well as Kyle’s brushes.

As far as prerequisite skills, I would recommend some knowledge of Photoshop with the goal of wanting to learn additional techniques. In class, we’ll talk about both design and technical aspects of creating this type of digital mixed media work. I will demonstrate at a reasonable pace so that it will be easy to follow along. I suggest pausing and repeating sections and possibly even slowing the speed in your browser when trying to work through any difficult parts. Adobe Photoshop is required for this class as we are using specific settings and brushes only available for this software. This course is for all levels; I recommend being acquainted with Photoshop somewhat, and, also knowing the basic principles of creating images, but most steps are explained very thoroughly.

The key concepts I will include:

· Adjusting setting on brushes including texture, color dynamics and brush tip shape

· methods to edit images and create simple masks made from selections

· working with flow and opacity to create transparency effects

· playing with hue and saturation to affect scatter brushes and provide texture

· mixer brushes and smudge brushes

· good examples, reference and inspiration for reinforcing the goal

Don’t worry if you have always wondered how to achieve traditional techniques but don’t own a tablet or Procreate. You will find that Photoshop is the most powerful natural media software on the planet. Let’s have you creating incredible mixed media pieces this week, with this class. Having art with your beautiful new techniques absolutely do-able with this small investment of time. Let’s get this party started!

Introduction and Overview

In this lesson, I will explain the goals for the class and I will share examples of my work. We will discuss the main techniques we will be using in this class.

Lesson 1: Review and Overview

In this lesson, we will go through the initial steps of preparing the art. I give you a quick look at my art journals to explain my process and I will talk about how Kyle Webster’s brushes will help me to create a mixed media look.

Lesson 2: Document Set-up and Action Plan

For this lesson, we will go through the process of preparing the elements and I will show you more in my art journals. I will explain my brush choices, how to download more brushes and we’ll take about texture settings, shape dynamics and brush tip settings.

Lesson 3: Discovering Brush Settings with Gouache

This lesson will have us exploring more brush settings. I will also show you a method to place a repeat of the pattern in the background to make painting the mixed media back-drop easier.

Lesson 4: Experiments with Glaze and Brush Settings

We continue exploring the brushes and experimenting here with settings like flow and transparency, as well as brush blending modes. We also touch on document settings such as making layers and groups to help keep us organized. In this lesson, you also learn about masking techniques, selections, saving selections and loading selections. I will also explain how to stay away from unprintable colors.

Lesson 5: Watercolour, Bright Ink and Spatter

In this lesson, we will add more texture using the spatter brushes. I will explain settings that may seem mysterious on the brush panel and explain more about the color dynamics. You will see how to add tons of texture easily to your background.

Lesson 6: Textural and Other Details

For this lesson, we will go through a bunch of experiments with the brush settings. I will explain the thrash blend and mixer brush controls, and how to sample from all layers. I also introduce my favorite brush, the Comic BG brush by Kyle.

Lesson 7: Adjustments, Fine Tuning and Details

We continue using the brushes to add details and more fine-tuning to our adjustments. We will create a mask using the Save Selection function. I will explain different ways of using and loading the selection.

Lesson 8: Testing and Perfecting

In this lesson, we will do some of the edge painting and will work with smooth and flow settings again. We talk about why we should preserve edit features. We play around with the color scheme, changing it considerably, and then we test the pattern repeat in full color.

Lesson 9: Finessing and Color Adjusting Final Pattern Tile

For this lesson, we will discuss next steps and wrap-up. I will show you the different pattern color choices I created on several mockups so you can see the full effect. Thanks so much for being here! Hope to see you in many other classes!

Concepts covered:

Concepts covered include but are not limited to digital mixed media art, digital watercolor art, digital gouache, digital glaze brushes, digital brayer brush, Photoshop brush settings, mixer brush settings, load brushes, flow and opacity on Photoshop brushes, Photoshop filters, keyboard shortcut reinforcement, erasing, brush load and flow settings, Kyle’s natural edge eraser, rubber stamping, magic wand selection tool, selections as masks, saving selections, using channels to load selections, puppet warp, warp tool, moving, resizing, transform and much more!

You will get the bonus of…

· direction from an instructor who has been in the graphic design business and education game for over 40 years

• awareness of multiple approaches to resolve each design challenge

• handouts explaining key concepts

• a list of helpful online sites to further your education