Adobe – Sew Becky Jo

In the name of all that is Stephen Covey and “Sharpen the Saw,” I do try to make myself take time and learn more, refresh what I know, update my tech/knowledge, and make myself a better, more well-rounded person.

Honestly, it’s my ever-supportive husband that is keeping me updated in the tech department, and so I find myself with an iPad Pro & pencil, perfectly timed for my need (want) to update my Adobe skills. Again. This time, my Illustrator and hand-drawing.

Here’s where I’m at NOW:

I’ve never been a hand-drawer. I’ve always relied on CAD, whether CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator, or heck, you used to be able to break apart Microsoft clipart and manipulate it if you tinkered with it long enough (can you still do that?)… What I’m saying is I’m a dinosaur completely reliant on a mouse. I’ve got mad control with a trackball and the tendinitis to prove it. lol

This is a new series to get where I want to be and:

keep me accountable
get any advice from the inter webs you may want to share
share what I have found as I go along
I’ve got some hand-drawn patterns and a few ideas up my sleeve. I want to get to the point I can share them.

Now that you know my goals at this juncture, let’s begin.

I signed up for the Craftsy Drawing Fashion Flats class from Laura Volpintesta. I also put out a “help” call on Instagram, and found Laura is not only on Instagram, but she’s sharing really great information there, has a full line of classes, and has a HUGE YouTube playlist.

I’m already learning tons from Linda’s class, but to find out she’s super generous with her knowledge, and very body-positive and diversity-positive, is just the cherry on the sundae.

Above is Linda’s croquis imported into the Adobe Draw app on iPad Pro.

This is my first attempt at drawing over Linda’s croquis. I’m hoping to get better – because wow. That’s bad.

Pros of Adobe Draw: I can upload the croquis (or anything) to a library in Adobe Capture, then from that library, put the croquis in a layer to draw over and make visible/invisible as I need. Also, layers. Also, Adobe Draw exports to “real” Adobe Illustrator on my Mac. Ecosystems are a good thing – or at least good relationships between ecosystems. Apple Pencil response is good.

Cons: Brushes are pretty meh and all really the same. Gotta have Adobe Capture (this may or may not be an issue – if you’re used to Adobe, you know there’s always a Suite to anything you want to do…you can never have just one thing.)

This is an app called Paper – just the free version so far. I love the watercolor brush although I can’t help but think it’s hit trendy-status. This is without a croquis and using Linda’s techniques. This is also after a month of (very lackadaisical) practice.

Pros: Apple pencil handles very nicely. Watercolor brush is BOMB, and possibly soon to be as dated as using the word BOMB.

Cons: No upload ability. In fact, I don’t see any import/export capability…other than taking a screenshot. This does not bode well for my continued use. And no layers. AAAAAAAAhhhhhhh. I can’t deal.

This is Adobe Sketch. I just started playing with it last night…so be gentle on my little oil figure.

Pros: That oil brush is fun. I can import/export – see Linda’s croquis underneath my oil girl. Layers, OMG I love layers. I didn’t realize how much I loved layers until I tried to go without them. I like that I can easily change my tools to a series of 5 brushes that I want to use….I think Draw does this too.

Cons: The watercolor brush isn’t as fun or trendy as Paper’s watercolor brush, BUT it has this cool “fan” icon button that you push when you want the water color bleed to stop. So, that’s neat…for 10 minutes (ok, I’m lying, I played with it for like an hour.)

So, what’s next?

That’s only 3 apps. I get it. It’s only February. What should I try next? I see a lot of pros/cons out there for Procreate. Mostly that people not used to, say, the Adobe CC Suite think it’s too complicated, and those used to the Adobe CC Suite think too many tools are being taken away for non-pro usage. Keep in mind, Paper is too…basic for me. Basic? Yeah, I’m sticking with basic. It’s fun, but not fitting my need, how about that? Maybe I’ve already hit what I need in Adobe and need to buckle down on muscle memory/do the work?

Thoughts? Comments? Art critiques?

Freezer paper crafts are all over the internet and that’s all well and good, but what do you do when you didn’t buy the freezer paper when you saw it, and couldn’t find it the next time you went? You buy a ginormous roll of plain white contact paper for $5!!! It will last me well past the adhesive turning to a gummy, sticky mess inside the roll. Uh…that part might not be a bonus.

Anyway, Joann Fabrics and Crafts will have a sale on t-shirts at least every other month or so when they run about $3 a pop. You’re, like, losing money if you don’t buy them for your kids. Kids grow so fast and ruin things so fast that at $3 each, there is no better deal. That, and you can afford to get a $5 pack of fabric paint and some freezer (contact) paper. Honestly, I don’t remember how much the pack of fabric paint was, but here they are at Michael’s Craft Store. Paint pens are really silly when you think about it….they’re impossible to write with…they just make big globs. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I printed a few options for the kids to choose from in making their stencils. Hazel did the Autobots Transformers symbol, Alex did a spider and I sorta winged a shot at Totoro. I just did some Google searches in images, tweaked some in PhotoShop to get make them cleaner and black/white, and the spider was actually just a stock Adobe image.

Tape them to the contact paper at the sides. I used a box knife to cut the pattern out, but if you have an X-ACTO set, that might be a lot easier. Obviously, this is a grown-up job. I did it on a self-healing Olfa mat, but, again, cardboard is great. It may not be pretty, but that is what tape is for.

Peel the backing off the contact paper, and stick it to the shirt. Use tape to fix any cutting errors on the contact paper. The paint will bleed through the fabric, so put something between the layers of front and back, or you’ll have the front glued to the back with the paint that leaked through. I had some plastic wrapped canvas stored for more painting projects from another sale, so I slid those in between. Cardboard would work fine or even a plastic bag flattened out.

Now it’s time to paint. Like I said, the name “paint pens” is sort of a misnomer in my opinion. You can’t really write with them, however, they do allow for controlled amounts of paint which is a good thing. We each put out a glob of the color we wanted, and used our fingers to smear around in the area to be painted. This works well – just keep in mind, big globs left behind leave big, hard, plasticky dried paint spots. When smeared to a light, but saturated, coating, it dries pretty nicely and is flexible with the fabric.

In my experience with this and other stencils, you want to leave the stencil until the paint is still tacky, but not dry. If you wait until it dries, you run the risk of the stencil being glued to the shirt by the paint. If you do it while it’s too wet, there can be smearing or leaking/running paint. We did this on a fairly dry day outside (in Oregon, that’s saying something), and the paint was tacky in an hour. I left some of the detail bits in the Totoro stencil too long and had to pick them off with tweezers and a bit more force, but nor harm/foul assuming I never wanted to use the stencil again. I think one homemade Totoro t-shirt is plenty for me.

Will I do this again? Yes – but I admit I’ll probably try real freezer paper next time to see if it’s a little more wieldy and easier to cut. But the fabric pens were great – really easy, fun to use and what a fun, cheap day.

I dig a fun, cheap day.

Tag: Adobe

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