From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

863 Live brushes in Adobe Fresco

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

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863 Live brushes in Adobe Fresco

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- Hey, gang. This is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. Today, we will further explore a new app called Adobe Fresco. I'll be showing it to you on an iPad Pro, but it runs on other tablets as well, or what Adobe is calling touch first and stylus powered platforms, as I say, tablets. Now, you can look up the system requirements, but here's the thing, this is an amazing first version app. If I might be so bold, this is the first mobile app from Adobe that feels like more than a toy. I mean, Adobe has made some great toys, but this is a bonafide productivity tool. This week is all about Fresco's live brushes, which include forever wet watercolors and smeary, textured oils, neither of which are included in Photoshop, by the way. Did I just imply that Fresco, a lowly tablet app, is better than big, old mainstream Photoshop? Well, I mean come on, yes I did. Not in every way, mind you, just the following. All right, here's the final, colorful version of the artwork opened inside Adobe Fresco, running on an iPad Pro. I'm going to go ahead and tap the Home icon in the top left corner of the screen so I can see my recently opened artwork. I'll select this second guy, Big Robot Lines, which contains all of the line art. Next I'll go over to the vertical toolbox on the left hand side of the screen, and I'll tap and hold on the third icon down, which is actually the second tool, which gives me access to the live brushes. For now there are two varieties of live brushes inside Fresco, and those are watercolor and oils. I'm going to tap on the word Watercolor in order to reveal the watercolor brushes, and I'll select the second one down, Watercolor Wash Soft, and I'll go ahead and tap its star in order to make it one of my favorites. All right, now I'm going to dial in a few attributes here. I'll tap on this color circle in order to bring up the color wheel, and I'll go ahead and dial in a shade of violet, as I've already down in advance here, then I'll tap on the size option which is currently set to 200 in my case, and remember, if you want to dial in a specific value, then you can press and hold on that option to bring up a keypad. Next I'll tap on the word Flow right here. Flow ultimately controls the density of the brush stroke. As you may know, when you're painting inside of any digital program you're actually laying down individual dollops of paint that then blend with each other in order to create a continuous brush stroke. The opacity of each one of those dollops is the flow. If you were to increase the flow value, each dollop of paint is going to be more opaque. If you back it off then they're going to be less opaque, and as a result, you'll get a less dense brush stroke. All right, and next we have water flow, which determines how much water is loaded into the brush. I'm going to go ahead and decrease that value so we can see how it works, and then I'll grab my Apple Pencil, although you could just as easily be working with your finger for all of that, and I will paint inside of my artwork in order to create a watercolor brush stroke. I want you to notice a couple of things about it. First of all, the various lengths of the brush stroke do not really blend that well with each other, and that's because of that low water flow value. So in essence, we have a drier brush. Also notice that we are messing up the original line art, and that's because the top layer is selected, as you can see over on the right hand side of the screen. If you can't see your layers, by the way, then just go ahead and tap on this little Layer icon in the top right corner of the screen. All right, compare that to what happens if I tap on that little Droplets icon again, and I crank the water flow value beyond 90, let's say. Then I create a new brush stroke, like so. Notice that we have a lot more water loaded into the brush, so the various overlapping elements of the brush strokes are bleeding into each other, and we are also causing the original line art to bleed. Notice it's being treated as if it's wet ink. That's not what I want, so I'll go ahead and tap the Undo icon in the top right region of the screen a couple of times. Then I'll go ahead and zoom out here so I can see all of my artwork. All right, now I want to create a new layer, so I'll go ahead and tap on the bottom layer in the stack over on the right hand side of the screen. By default, this is a solid fill layer, incidentally, meaning that it's not a pixel based layer, so I can't paint on it. What I need to do is tap on the little Plus icon above the eye over there on the right hand side of the screen to create a new layer, and now I'll just go ahead and paint all over this layer. You can paint as many brush strokes as you like, by the way. Notice that they're all going to blend with each other because Fresco is treating all of the paint as if it is still wet. So in other words, as I'm painting over the various pigments, they are bleeding into each other. Notice also that I am not harming the original line art, and that's because the line art layer is not selected. So I'll just go ahead and paint in some more purple here. Now I'm going to change the color, let's say to a shade of blue, by tapping on the color icon over there on the left hand side of the screen. I'll dial in a shade of blue this time around, let's say, and then I'll just paint over the middle portion of the artwork. Notice that the colors mix together even though I have changed the color. This is not the way it worked inside Adobe Sketch, by the way. If you made any kind of major modification, then the paint dried up and the brush strokes no longer merged into each other. This has been remedied, I think it's a remedy anyway, inside of Fresco. Incidentally, if you do want to dry things up so that your various brush strokes do not merge with each other, then tap on the little dot, dot, dot icon, that ellipsis below the eye, and then you would select this guy right here, Dry Layer. That is not what I want, however, so I am going to carefully move my finger away from that command. Now I'm going to add some orange down at the bottom. I want you to notice that we're seeing recent colors down here at the bottom of the color panel, and so I already have an orange that I've been using in the past, which I'll go ahead and select right here, and actually want to back off of the saturation a little bit, and now I will paint like so across the bottom of the artwork. You can see that I am adding orange which is fairly predictable, I think, at this point. If I wanted to add more orange I would just paint more orange in. If you want to increase the density of your brush stroke on the fly, then you just need to press harder with your Apple Pencil. Now I want you to notice another option that's available to you. Remember the Touch Shortcut ring, this guy right here, which you can move to any location you like. And so notice if you press and hold on the ring and you begin to brush, you'll see Pure Water in the top right corner of the screen, and that's telling me that I am just laying down water. So I'm not laying down any pigment, I'm just laying down water, and as a result I'm causing the existing colors in the artwork to merge into each other as we're seeing right here. Which can be great for filling in some of the gaps as I'm doing now. Also notice the way the colors come together. We have a nice, sharp delineation. I'm continuing to paint up here near the top of the image and over here on the left hand side as well. Another great thing about live brush watercolors here inside Fresco is that they can be very useful for creating vignettes. I'm going to tap on that Layers icon in the top right corner of the screen in order to dismiss the Layers panel so I can see what kind of holes I still have left like this guy over here on the right hand side of the artwork. I'll just go ahead and press on the Touch Shortcut ring, and I'll paint it away. Then I'll tap on the color icon again over on the left hand side of the screen, and I'll dial in a very dark shade of red, let's say. I'll paint rather fiercely in the top right corner of my image, and by that I mean that I'm pressing very hard on the stylus. I'll go ahead and right down here in the bottom right corner as well, and then I'll paint around the other edges like so. Because I'm bearing down, I am increasing the density of that brush stroke on the fly. Of course, if you wanted to go even further, you could increase that flow value as well. I'll just go ahead and brush some more. Notice the whole time, Fresco is treating all of the paint as if it is still wet. All right, I'll go ahead and give this guy a quick, two finger pinch so it fills up the entire screen. And that is how you work with live brushes, which are designed to simulate real-world watercolors and oil paints here inside Adobe Fresco. Now, if you're a member of LinkedIn Learning, I have a followup movie in which we take a look at the other variety of live brush offered by Adobe Fresco, oils, as in smeary, intermingling, never drying oil paints. I have to be honest, in the real world I am not fond of oils. They're too messy, it's too easy to ruin your artwork, and you have to clean your brushes with turpentine. I got to see an organic chem, so no surprise, I do not like organic oils. But I love digital oils because they clean up with a touch of the Undo icon. Deke's Techniques each and every week! Keep watching.

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