Elevate Your Illustrations and Workflows with Fresco and Illustrator

[Music] [Natasha Polozenko] So hello, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. I'm Natasha Polozenko, also known as @Nataszko all over the web. I'm a New York City based illustrator originally from Sydney, Australia. You can probably tell by the accent. I'm super pumped to bring you this session today, Elevate Your Illustrations and Workflows with Fresco and Illustrator.

So just to give you a preview of what's going to be covered today, as the title suggests, we're going to be specifically looking at Fresco and Illustrator, how they work individually, but then also how they work together in a workflow.

And we are going to be doing this through the lens of Fashion Illustration. If you're not a huge fan of fashion illustration, please stick around because I still think that you're going to get value from this. So we're really going to be thinking about textures, using different effects, and thinking about how to bring material and clothing to life in your illustrations. So in the first part of today's session, I'm going to introduce you to some fundamental tips and tricks about drawing fabrics and materials. This part of the presentation is going to go by super quick. Then in Part 2, we're going to dive into Fresco and talk about brushes, drawing tools, coloring, and shading, and how to pull all of that into Illustrator, which will then lead us to Part 3 in which we will talk all things Illustrator including how to add shading, pattern, texture, effects, details, and more. So let's get into it. So the number one rule in my opinion is to always start with your base models first. Even if your character is dressed head to toe in clothing, having a solid base model to start off with in an interesting pose is going to get you so much further. And it's also a great opportunity to communicate some of your own personal style and flair. There are so many different ways to draw a human figure, and I'm sure as you've seen before, in fashion illustrations, typically, the proportions are hugely exaggerated. So just use this as an opportunity to play and express yourself and your artistic style.

It's also important to note that physics plays a huge part in fashion illustration. The kinds of materials you're working with and how it interacts with the surrounding environment is super important to keep in mind. So take silk, for example. Silk is pretty heavy, it's slippery, it's going to lay close to the body and then fold directly down in the direction of gravity. It's also pretty thin, so it might bunch and fold over itself in certain areas. Something like cotton may hold its structure a little bit more, but the fabric will still slightly drape in down in the direction of gravity too. Something like a puffer jacket or something that's quilted is going to hold its own structure, so that it's not going to be as beholden to gravity as the other fabrics. It's also important to note that most of the time fabric isn't going to be super close to the skin unless it's in the case of tights and stockings, which, of course, will hug the body very closely. A material like tulle, tulle, however you want to say it, is super stiff, so it's going to hold its own structure and defy gravity.

And when you have a fabric like leather or latex, something that's going to be really important is the way that it reflects light. So the way that you approach shading and especially highlights is going to be super important in this case. We'll dive into shading in a little bit more detail later, but this is just all to say that the way you draw and render fabrics is really important to help you get a feel for the material you're using in your work.

And another thing that I quickly wanted to mention around the topic of drawing clothes is that in some cases, you also need to remember to show the inside or the back of clothing too. This just helps give a nice sense of dimension, sorry, and volume to your piece. So I know that a lot of you are probably familiar with the difference between vector and raster graphics, so I'm not going to linger on this for too long. But it's worth mentioning because it is going to come up a lot in this session. So essentially, vector graphics are made up of lines, points, and curves. They connect to create these graphics that are infinitely scalable and you won't ever get any quality loss with vectors. Whilst raster graphics are made up of pixels. So when you scale your work up, you can actually see those pixels. Meaning that you are going to get loss of quality if you're scaling too much.

So when it comes to the software that's used for creating these different kinds of graphics, a lot of people will point to Illustrator as the main software for creating vectors, which is true, but there is a little bit more nuance to the conversation because even though Illustrator is primarily a vector program, it also has the ability to create raster graphics. I'm going to be going through some of these throughout the session, but it's important to know, especially when you're adding all of these different fancy effects that just because it's created in Illustrator doesn't necessarily mean that everything is going to be vector in the end.

Fresco is a program that depending on which brush you're using, will let you create either vector or raster graphics.

And although we're not going to be addressing it in today's session, I just wanted to also call out Photoshop here. Photoshop is purely raster, and you won't have the ability to create vectors in here.

So none of this is to say that one program is better than the others for illustration. In fact, a lot of the time, I will use all three in one workflow. Sometimes, it's just Fresco and Illustrator. Sometimes, it's Illustrator and Photoshop. Sometimes, it's just one of these three. It really depends on the project, your personal preference. So for those of you who are still trying to find an illustration workflow that works for you, this session is going to be super helpful to you and I encourage you to play around with all of these combination of all of these and see what sticks for you. And for those of you who already have a workflow that you're comfortable with, I still think this session is going to be useful. Hopefully, it'll help you unlock a new facet to your workflow.

Okay, so now let's dive into Fresco. So for those of you who aren't familiar, here's what I think is specifically special about the program and why I love using it so much. In Fresco, you have three different options for drawing. You have your Pixel brush, which as the name suggests, uses pixels to put down loose sketchy strokes. I would liken Pixel brushes to using pencil or crayon. You're going to get this nice hand-drawn look with using this brush. For this illustration up here, for example, I specifically use the charcoal brush.

Next, we have the live brush, which is so cool because it allows you to create watercolor or oil painting brushstrokes in a way that feels really realistic. So with the watercolor application, for example, it actually bleeds into the paper. So you'll notice that after you've made a stroke, it will continue to change just as if you were actually painting on paper. So there is this level of unpredictability in this process, even though you do have the ability to fine-tune your brush settings when you're doing this. The illustration you see up here is created using said watercolor brush. And you can start to see how by just even using different brushes, you can start to have different effects on your material. So to me, this effect is achieving this soft fuzzy effect, especially on her cardigan, her scarf, which is really effective in this specific case.

And lastly, we have the vector brush, which is my favorite and most used brush of the bunch. And as the name suggests, this brush creates vector strokes, meaning that they can be resized, zoom in and out, and you'll never get any quality loss. In today's session, I'm going to be mostly focusing on the vector brush, especially because as we'll see later, it connects really well with Illustrator.

So I'm going to run through a few very basic tools and functionalities that I really like using. And to stay in the theme of fashion illustration, I'm going to demonstrate them by showing you how to draw a skirt. But before we get into the skirt itself, let's just start really, really simple. So start off by drawing a blobby shape using your vector brush tool. It's also important to note that you can choose the level of smoothing that you want Fresco to help you out with. A low level of smoothing is going to give you a line that's a little bit more sensitive to all the little movements in your hand, whilst a higher smoothing is going to interpolate between all of these actions and give you a really clean and, of course, smooth result.

So once your blob is in there, just create a line directly above your blob. And then what you want to do is draw straight lines leading from the outside of each curve up to that point you've created, basically, just as I'm demonstrating here.

And in case you're wondering how I'm achieving these perfectly straight lines in Fresco, it's simply by holding my pen down to my tablet until it snaps to a straight line. This is also useful if you want to draw perfect circles, ovals, arcs, or maybe something more geometric like a triangle or a star.

Also, side note, I don't want to get too far off topic, but you can also pull up drawing aids like a ruler to create perfectly level lines in your work. You'll find the option to open up those on the lower right-hand side of your screen. You can even find circle, square, or polygon drawing aids in here too. Super helpful, especially if you need to be super precise in your illustration. So apologies for that segue, but back to our cloth. So by now, you're probably seeing where going with this. So we have all of these lines and we need to start getting rid of them so that this starts to read better as a piece of cloth. So you may be tempted to go in and use the Eraser tool for this, which you can find over in your Tools panel. And basically, if you were to go down this road, you would just select it and manually erase like this. But before you get carried away with this method, there is a better way.

So instead, with your Brush tool selected, you can double tap that circle that's up there floating near the top point of the fabric. This is known as the selector, and it will basically allow you to toggle between different modes. And depending on which tool you're using, that will be different. So for the Pen tool, that just so happens to be the eraser. So again, yes, you can go in and start manually erasing like this if you like after you've pressed that selector.

But there is an even easier way. So if you click on the selector one more time, so that it turns into a blue outline instead of a blue fill, it'll allow you to trim paths like this. And you can go in and start removing all of those unwanted lines in a way that's so much quicker. And it's actually much neater than using the Eraser tool because if you can imagine when you're using the Eraser tool, you're potentially erasing areas that shouldn't be erased. So this just gives you a nice, clean, and much better result. So now we have this nice opaque piece of cloth, but you could also choose to have it look a little bit transparent. And you just do that by making sure you have a copy of that base shape before you trimmed all of the unwanted parts and turning the opacity down as much as you like. Okay, so to show you how that basic principle actually translates to a skirt, let me show you how I would do that here. So I've created my blob, the general shape of the skirt, and now, I'm just going to draw these lines up in the direction that the skirt is flowing, remembering our rules of physics. I'm not going to go to the effort of extending all of the lines further than they need to be just for the sake of time, and I'm going to draw in some of these little extra details, some of those folds at the top, for example. And that is that. So, of course, there are many, many different ways to draw a skirt. Long, short, pleated, pencil skirt. Here are just a few I whipped up.

Now if you're not comfortable with drawing fabric or clothing, I would recommend basically finding reference images and studying how the fabric folds around the body. So you'll see here that I brought in a reference image from the Adobe Stock Library. Of course, you always need to make sure that you have the appropriate rights to the image if you're doing this.

And the trick here is to find a reference image that is more or less in the same pose as your sketch. And just to make this demonstration super clean and clear, I'm going to remove the background and model, and have both halves of my coat on two separate layers. Now I'm going to use my Transform tools to get the clothing into position. And to do this, you can use skew, distort, and perspective. All of these will help you manipulate your object in very specific ways. But I ultimately find that the Liquify tool is going to be your best bet to get this piece exactly how you want it. This is especially helpful if your base models have unrealistic body proportions just as mine do. Also, just a side note on this process, I'm only really advocating for this method if you feel that you're really uncomfortable with drawing clothing or if you're a beginner. I think of this tracing as training wheels. Really great when you're first getting started, but ultimately, you want to be riding without them.

Okay, so once you are done with that, simply go ahead and trace out the jacket. You'll notice that I'm not going in and meticulously tracing every single detail. Instead, just using it as a guide and using my own artistic license in the process. So okay, just about finished with this sketch and I'm happy with how it's looking so far. So now, let's continue and talk about color.

So I'm going to bring this image back in for a second because something that's really cool about Fresco is that it will auto-generate a color palette from an imported photo. So if we look over in our color-- Sorry, Color panel, you will in fact see that all of these different colors here are drawn from that image. And I'm actually going to use this to color my illustration.

So if we like, we can just go ahead and start using the fill bucket to add in color into our different areas of our illustration like so. Simply dropping that color onto the sketch layer itself. But in order for this to work properly, you first and foremost need to make sure that all the line work you've created is clean and creates completely closed shapes. Otherwise, your color will bleed into places it shouldn't.

But if you want to keep your fills on a separate layer, what you can do is in your Layers panel, select the sketch layer as a reference layer.

And now, when you create a new layer over the top, you can fill in the exact same way. And this process is going to look very similar with the only difference being that after you're done with this, you can hide the original line work layer, so you're just left with the fills. Okay. So this is one way to add color and it's a great way to do it, especially if you want to have these outlines in your illustration. But let's say you don't want outlines.

In this case, I would actually recommend just redrawing each of your different shapes onto separate layers, as you can see up here in my Layers panel. So you may notice that once you do this and get rid of all of those black outlines, now some of that detail that we previously had in the illustration gets a little bit lost. So one way to bring that back is by using clipping masks to add a little bit of shading. Not only will this help us bring back some of that detail, but it'll actually add a little bit more depth and dimension into our work.

So because we have each of our different shapes on their own layers, adding clipping masks is going to be super easy. So find the shape you want to do first, create a new layer over the top, and now, by pressing this button over on the right side of the screen, you can easily create a clipping mask.

This basically means that everything we now draw will be constrained to that base shape. So I'm just going to go ahead and draw in those shadows like so.

And if you like, you can also add in highlights in the exact same way. So I'm hoping that this process is making sense. So now you can see that we've gone through and done that for the whole illustration. We've got that detail back, as well as some more dimension. Now yet another cool thing about Fresco is that as I just demonstrated, we not only have the ability to add vector shading, but you can also add shading using the Pixel brush in the exact same way. This is actually shading that I applied using my own custom grainy textured brush that I created in Photoshop, and I'm also able to use that over in Fresco, which I think is super cool. So I like using this effect for a really soft, smooth look. And of course, you have to remember that once you add the Pixel brush work, your illustration is no longer going to be vector. So just keep that in mind.

The same goes for using the Live brush tool to add shading. Again, this is not a vector effect, but definitely worth mentioning. So at the beginning of this presentation, I showed you what the watercolor live brush looked like, but this is what the oil paint brush looks like when you're constraining your stroke to the base illustration using clipping masks. I love this so much, and I think it creates a really cool painterly effect.

Okay, so now let's talk about moving our work out into Adobe Illustrator. So here is an illustration I prepared earlier. Again, it's really important that you have all of your different shapes built out onto separate layers. Now what you want to do is navigate up to the share icon up top and find the Open a copy option.

And once you click that, you'll have two options. And I'm going to select Illustrator desktop. But obviously, if you like, you can choose the iPad version here too.

So once you do that, you need to have your other device open. And then as if by magic, you will immediately get this pop-up in Illustrator. And here, you just need to make sure that you have Convert Layers to Objects selected and hit OK.

And now, you'll see that your artwork has successfully opened up into Illustrator. And the amazing thing is that the vector layers that you created in Fresco have been maintained. And you can see that in your Layers panel over on the right side of the screen. There is a lot of layers there, but it is helpful.

Where you do have to be careful though, is when it comes to all the anchor works in our artwork. By creating vectors in Fresco by hand, we have a lot more organic detail and curves that just adds a lot more anchor points to our piece. Seeing as though this artwork is fairly simple, all of those extra anchor points aren't going to be too much of a bother. But if you're dealing with a much more detailed complex piece, things can get a little bit difficult and it will make your file size pretty huge. So that's just something you may want to look out for.

It's for this same reason that a lot of people will actually opt to draw out their illustrations straight into Illustrator to begin with because also, in addition to less vector points, it also just allows you to create a finished effect that feels a little bit more clean and crisp. That's not to say that one method is better than the other. It all just comes down to the finished effect and style that you want to achieve in your work.

Okay, so going back to our original Fresco created illustration, the first thing that I want to talk about is adding shading. As I mentioned before, shading is important when it comes to drawing fabrics and clothing because it will help give overall dimension and start to suggest the different kinds of materials that we're dealing with.

So the very first and probably most obvious way to add shading is by using simple gradients. By applying linear gradients to certain shapes, we can start to suggest some dimension in our illustrations. And in some cases, the Radial Gradient tool can also be super helpful in helping us get a nice rounded shaded effect.

Now that's all well and good when you have simple, regular-ish kinds of shapes like I have here, but where you might start to run into issues is when it comes to more irregular shapes, like in the case of this skirt. You'll see here that neither the linear or radial gradient are necessarily going to be very effective in helping us achieve a nice, realistic looking shadow on that skirt.

So here's another way that you can add shading. With that shape that you want to shade selected, navigate over to the Draw Inside button, which should be at the bottom of your Tools panel. And once you click that, anything you now draw will be constrained to that base shape. So you can see here that I'm adding in my areas of shadow just by using my base pen.

Sorry. Just by using my Pen tool. Now in order to mimic the same effect that our gradient helped us achieve, what we're going to do is apply a blur effect to these shapes. So with both of these shapes selected, navigate to Effect, Blur. Now select Gaussian Blur. And in here, you can start to play with that blur radius until things are looking right. And I'm just going to apply a blending mode to those shadow shapes too.

So I won't bore you by making you sit through watching me do that for the whole illustration, but here are the rest of the shapes, how they look like when you have the shadows applied using that Draw Inside mode. And then, here's what it looks like once you apply the Gaussian Blur to each of those shadows. So while we're at it, another thing that we can do is adding the highlights. And for this, you don't even need to go into the Draw Inside Mode. Essentially, all you need to do is create a shape. Or in my case, I'm going to just create a thick stroke with a lighter color. Then I'm adding the Gaussian Blur and turning that blending mode to Overlay, just to help it pop a little bit more. And that's it.

So here's what that illustration looks like with all of the highlights added. And one important thing to note here is that you can be super subtle with this just as I'm being here, or you might choose to be super bold with how you are approaching your highlights, giving your work an almost reflective look. Again, it all just depends on your personal taste and what you're trying to achieve. So for example, you might choose to have really strong, sharp highlights for fabric like latex, or leather, or even silk.

Another cool effect that you may want to play around with is adding a little bit of graininess to your shadows. To do this, select your shadows, go to Effect...

Texture, Grain. In here, you can play with the different settings if you like. And that's all there is to it. It may be a bit hard to see up on screen, but now the lower part of that sleeve has a bit of a soft grainy effect applied. Also, side note, even after you add the grainy effect, you can still tweak the level of the Gaussian Blur, you can still edit that base shape if you like. You can change the shadow. You can change the color, whatever you like. All of these effects that you add in Illustrator are nondestructive, so you can always toggle them on and off in the Appearance panel. Now also important to note that adding effects like Gaussian Blur and Grain are, in fact, Photoshop effects, which means that they are, in fact, raster effects. For me, personally, 9 times out of 10, that isn't going to be an issue. But if you find yourself in a situation where you absolutely need your work to be fully vector, then I would say that you should probably just stick to using simple gradients, the one I've demonstrated before. Or you could potentially look into using vector brushes. And there are so many different ways to do this, one of which is just by creating a whole bunch of different dots in a somewhat circular cluster. I created these by using the Circle Shape tool in Illustrator, concentrating the larger ones in the center, and then gradually getting smaller and lighter in opacity as you get to the edges. This is going to help create a little bit more of a diffused look. It's also important to note that you can do this in Illustrator or even in Fresco using your Vector brush. Both ways of doing this are going to have a very similar outcome.

Then, once you're done, you go over to your Brushes panel and select the Add Brush icon.

Once you click that, you'll see a bunch of options for the kind of brush you want to create. And for this one, select Scatter Brush.

And now, you may not be able to see it up here, but now that's loaded up as a brush and ready for us to use. So if I go ahead and draw a line like so and apply our brush, we can then go into the brush settings and tweak a bunch of parameters until it's looking exactly how we want it to look.

And here's just a little sneak peek at what that may look like. Again, I'm using the Draw Inside functionality here to make sure that my brush is bound to the layer underneath. Also, you can customize your brush to get it exactly how you want it. You could, for example, have way more smaller, compact dots, or maybe instead of dots, you play with little squiggles, or blobs, or whatever. It's going to help you get the exact effect that you want. The sky is the limit with this. Other than potentially the file size, the more detailed, the larger and heavier your file might become. So just watch out for that.

Okay, let's switch gears for a moment and talk a little bit about patterns. So I've switched back into Fresco here and I've created a few different floral elements using the Vector brush and placed them all onto separate layers. Then in the same way we did before, I'm going to open that back up into Illustrator on my desktop.

And once that's in there, I'm just going to copy that all over into the main file I'm working in.

I'm going to select all of these elements then navigate to Object, Pattern, Make. And then from here, there are a bunch of different settings to pick from and you'll be able to see what your pattern looks like once it's tiled.

And so when you're in here, you can start adding, tweaking, and manipulating some of these different elements, to fill in some of the gaps that you might have between these tiles just to space out things so you're not seeing any weird overlaps or messiness. So once it's at a point where it's looking okay, you're happy with it, you can hit done.

And now, we're able to use that pattern.

And you will see that it is going to be 100% seamless. I'm also going to go back into the editing mode because I want to change the color of the pattern, so that it will match the color of the dress a little bit better.

And now to resize this pattern, all you need to do is navigate up to Object, Transform, Scale. And in here, you need to make sure that you have the Transform Objects deselected and Transform Pattern selected. Now you can go ahead and play with the percentage to change the size.

And now we can go ahead and start to apply that pattern to our shapes. This is as easy as duplicating the shape and eye dropping the pattern on top. In my case here, I also have to make sure that I'm adding the pattern underneath my shadows. So you may notice that the patterns we applied to both the skirt and the top part of the dress are perfectly aligned. And in this case, I actually don't want them to be aligned. Because as you can imagine, when you have a dress with different panels of fabric, the pattern isn't probably going to match out perfectly. So similarly to the way in which we resize the pattern, I'm going to navigate up to Object, Transform, and this time, select Rotate. And again, in this pop-up here, I'm just going to make sure that I only have Transform Pattern selected.

And from here, I can go ahead and change that angle of rotation just so that it isn't aligned with the skirt. And I can go ahead and do that for the rest of my shapes too.

And there we have it.

Another great and extremely convenient way to add patterns is by using GenAI by navigating to Object, Pattern, and selecting Generate Patterns Beta. You can use text prompts to create your fabric patterns. You can get super creative in this process and look through the generated options to see what works best for you. And again, if you need to rotate your patterns, if you need to resize them, you can do that in the exact same way we explored before. So in this case, I found a nice little pastel floral pattern to add to my dress.

There are also a bunch of fun patterns built straight into Illustrator, which you can access in the Swatches library. So with your Swatches panel open, navigate to this little icon that I have circled up here, scroll down to Patterns, and then here, you can explore a whole range of different options. I personally really like the options available under Nature Animal Skins because they are specifically helpful in fashion illustration. I recommend you have a look through these, as well as some of the other Swatches libraries that are built directly into Illustrator.

And again, as with the other different options we explored, don't forget that you can change the scale of the patterns too, which in this case, very necessary.

And this is what I ended up with. Also, side note, I also changed the blending mode of that green shadow that I had on the jacket originally just to make sure that it blends a little bit better with the leopard skin pattern underneath.

So we've already briefly touched on some of the Photoshop effects when we talked about shading, but there are a few other Photoshop effects built into Illustrator that will help us create some cool pattern and textured effects for fabrics. And you can easily access them here under Effect in your top menu.

I've gone ahead and pulled just a few to demonstrate how some of these effects look. So on the top left here, you have a few that create this leather look. Plastic wrap can approximate a latex like material. Rough pastels and texturizer create this tough woven effect that I think could look like denim. There's a lot to play with here. And if you're someone who is really interested in introducing a lot of texture into your work, I'd recommend getting acquainted with these Photoshop effects. They can be really helpful. But again, I just have to say it. Photoshop effects are in fact raster effects, so keep that in mind.

And we also have a few Illustrator effects that we can also play with too that are in fact vector effects. As an example, I'm going to walk you through the Roughen effect, which can be used to create this fuzzy, fluffy look. So let me demonstrate that on a circle first. So you have your circle. You would navigate up to Effect, Distort-- Sorry, Distort & Transform and select Roughen. And then in here, you have the ability to tweak the size and detail of the effect until you like how it's looking. And in this case, we want something with a lot of detail, so that it looks like these little hairs. And that's the main gist. So now just to show you how that looks like applied to something like a sweater, you basically just apply this effect to each of your different shape layers. With this, I would actually also recommend working in layers, so creating a few overlays, adding in shadows and highlights just to add in a little bit more dimension. So here, you see I've applied that Roughen effect to the upper part of the sleeve. But here's what it looks like once that effect is applied to the whole sweater. So hopefully, you're starting to get a little bit of a sense for how to use the Roughen effect.

I also wanted to show you another cool, fun way to use the Roughen effect. So the first thing that you want to do is create a circle with a gradient. I'm going to make sure that my gradient is diagonal like this. Then I'm going to go ahead and apply that Roughen effect, playing with those different settings until I have something like this.

Next, I'm going to duplicate this shape, move it off to the side a little. And then using the Blend tool, which you can find over in your toolbar, I'm going to blend both of these two shapes together. Clicking back into that Blend tool again, to open the settings, selecting specified steps, and increasing that number so that it all appears smooth.

So once you have that, what we're going to do is draw a simple line in the form that we want that effect to flow. Now select-- Once you have that line, select both of these items. Navigate up to Object, Blend, Replace Spine...

And there we have it. We have this super cool, fluffy tube thing. So I'm just going to zoom in a little bit just to show you some of that detail. And maybe this doesn't have a whole lot of practical applications. I've seen it used a lot in text when people are creating custom type, for example. But in the case of illustration, I thought that this might be cool as this fuzzy scarf or boa for my character.

Okay, so I also want to touch on some 3D effects. Again, this is a super niche effect, but I think that in certain cases, where we want to bring some life to this puffer jacket, it can look really cute. But side note, before I demonstrate, even though you'll find this under Illustrator effects, it is in fact Raster, so keep that in mind. So to do this, navigate up to Effect, 3D Materials, and select Extrude & Bevel. And in the settings, select Inflate, and just make sure you have front selected for the preset. And now you'll see that this creates this cool inflated look, which is perfect for what we're trying to achieve specifically on this puffer jacket. You can also go in here and change things like the direction of the lighting if you need, but I think it's looking pretty cool as is.

Another cool thing, if you navigate up to the Materials tab, you can actually pick from a huge range of different materials and textures to use in your illustrations too. There are so many great textures to explore right inside of Illustrator.

And what is even cooler is that there is a whole library of textures that you can download online. If you go to Adobe Substance 3D Assets, you can search for whatever texture or material you need for your project. So you can just imagine how cool this would be to explore, especially as a fashion illustrator. But again, just remember, this is a very niche effect and Inflate isn't necessarily going to look good for every clothing or object that you're trying to create, but I think it's definitely worth exploring and playing with.

Now I just want to talk about a fun extra finishing touch. This is a lace detail that I drew up in Fresco. It can be really anything you want, but the only trick here is that you just need to make sure that the edge of the left side perfectly matches up with the edge of the right side just so that it will be able to seamlessly repeat.

So now with that drawing sent over from Fresco back into Illustrator, I can select the whole thing. And now I can go ahead and open my brush panel, and I want to create a new brush by selecting this little icon in the bottom right of the panel.

And here, you can select Pattern Brush. And when you get this pop up, you can play with the different options for this brush, including how you want the brush to act, for example, when it goes around a corner. So now that we've created this new brush, let's see it in action.

So I'm just going to create a line like so...

And select the brush we just created.

And that's it. A seamless lace brush, which if you can imagine, would come in super, super handy for really detailed fashion illustrations. This can be created in minutes and saved in your Swatches library, so it can be used again and again across different projects. And there are so many other possible brushes you could create like this. So think like a chain effect, or pearls, or a fringe trim. The sky is really the limit with this.

Okay, time to take a breath. That brings us to the end of the session. Thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it, and I hope you got something from it. I'm active over on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. If you want to connect, I'm always happy to talk all things illustration. Otherwise, if there are any more questions now, I'd be happy to fill them. But thank you everyone for coming, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your MAX experience and the party tonight. So thank you.

[Music]

In-Person On-Demand Session

Elevate Your Illustrations and Workflows with Fresco and Illustrator - S6331

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ON DEMAND

Closed captions in English will be added in early November.

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About the Session

Join illustrator Natasha Polozenko as she explores workflows in both Adobe Fresco and Illustrator, exploring how the apps work together and independently to create different illustrative effects. This session will focus on character and fashion illustration as a use case — bringing form and fabrics to life through shading, texture, and pattern.  

You’ll gain a better understanding of:

  • Different workflows and how each can be used to achieve specific effects in your work
  • Tools and techniques in Adobe Fresco that will simplify your process and elevate your illustrations
  • Applying different techniques to achieve unique stylistic effects with Illustrator

Technical Level: Intermediate

Category: Inspiration

Track: Graphic Design and Illustration

Audience: Art/Creative Director, Graphic Designer, Illustrator

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