Learn to combine your digital & traditional drawings with traditional watercolor textures.

Children's book illustrator Will Terry will show you various methods of digital drawing, painting, and ink and how to combine those digital skills with the organic and random textures made with actual watercolors. in this course you will see Will complete/demo 5 different digital paintings to help you understand how versatile this method is.

You can create your own textures or save time, effort and money by using one of the 20 watercolor textures that come as downloads with this course. Each of these textures was painted by Will and is royalty free for you. Use them in your amateur or professional work - they're yours. If you've wanted to learn how to work digitally but keep that traditional paper and medium look - this class might be what you're looking for.

In this class you will learn:

  • How to manually merge two scanned texture files in Photoshop and how to use "Photomerge" in Photoshop to automatically sew your scanner passes together.

  • How to create and use a digital pencil in Photoshop.

  • How to separate your hand drawn traditional or digital pencil from a white background or paper.

  • How to manipulate the scanned watercolor textures in multiple ways to make them appropriate for your painting or drawing.

  • How to add watercolor textures to 5 different types of digital paintings.

  • It does NOT teach how to make traditional physical watercolor textures but there are 20 textures provided for you to use.

Materials needed:

This course is taught using Photoshop CC. Many other versions of Photoshop will still work however some of the lower versions do not include "Photomerge" so Will goes over the manual workaround. There are other programs that you could use to take this class as long as you are well versed in them and can figure out where similar tools are to complete the techniques taught in Photoshop.

Graphics tablet or graphics monitor (Like Wacom Cintiq or intuos - or products made by Yiynova, Monoprice, Huion, etc.)


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About the Instructor

Illustrator Will Terry

Will Terry has been a freelance illustrator for 26 years. He got his start working for magazines and newspapers in the Washington D.C. area. His early clients include publications such as Time, Money, WSJ and ads for Sprint, Pizza Hut, Fed Ex, and Master Card. He has illustrated about 30 children’s books for a number of publishers, including Random House, Simon & Schuster, Scholastic, and Penguin. When he's not mountain biking, hiking, or snowboarding he works out of the svslearn.com office in Provo Utah. 

Who should take this course:

Ideal for children's book illustrators, artists, greeting card designers, comic artists, graphic novel artists, cover artists, etc.

Students should be familiar with the fundamentals of color and value but these skills can be learned after taking this course.

We suggest taking the following classes first:

Course curriculum

    1. Introduction

    2. Scan mix Photomerge

    3. Traditional Digital

    4. Separate Pencil

    5. Manipulate Watercolor

    6. Little Surfer

    7. Tugboat

    8. Dragon Line Art

    9. Bear Fire

    10. Textures

    11. Images

    12. Materials List

About this course

  • 12 lessons
  • 2.5 hours of video content
  • 9 Videos
  • 2 Downloads

Reviews

5 star rating

informative as always!

Heather Lee

I've worked with watercolor and digital combinations for a while, but I learned some new techniques to try out. Thanks Will Terry!

I've worked with watercolor and digital combinations for a while, but I learned some new techniques to try out. Thanks Will Terry!

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5 star rating

Amazing course

Priya Deb

This course gave a very concise and to-the-point yet extremely useful insight into combining watercolor with digital illustration.

This course gave a very concise and to-the-point yet extremely useful insight into combining watercolor with digital illustration.

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5 star rating

Good layer explanations

Atalia Hernandez

I do traditional painting and drawing and i am learning to paint digitally and i love that this combines both and it has shortcuts to easy solutions. I will ...

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I do traditional painting and drawing and i am learning to paint digitally and i love that this combines both and it has shortcuts to easy solutions. I will try and do some experiments and use all the textures provided and make my own.

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5 star rating

Learned a lot in this course.

MaryJane Mitchell

This is a great course. I learned so much. I now have to go and practive what I learned. Great downloads of textures and images. Loved it.

This is a great course. I learned so much. I now have to go and practive what I learned. Great downloads of textures and images. Loved it.

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5 star rating

Loved it!

Jen van Baden

This course really helped my to finally get that natural touch to my digital drawings.

This course really helped my to finally get that natural touch to my digital drawings.

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5 star rating

Thank you for this course, Will.

Claudia Fiebig

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