Will Terry's Online Art Classes for Children's Illustrators
Are you an artist or illustrator trying to break into the children's book or app market? Check out Will Terry's online art classes on design, illustration, Photoshop, digital painting, and more at the Folio Academy.
Will Terry is an accomplished illustrator and artist who has published children's books, teaches university art classes, and publishes ebooks and apps. He has developed quite a following on his blog, where he generously shares information about his work processes.
I was first exposed to his courses when I won a giveaway on his blog of his video, "How to Design a Drawing." In this almost 3-hour long video (broken up into smaller chunks), Will goes through the fundamentals of good design and emphasizes the importance of good design as the basis for successful digital (and traditional) paintings. Since then, I have taken a number of other courses of his, including "Digital Painting for Photoshop" and "Making Art for eBooks and Story Apps." I am currently taking another Folio course by comic artist Dani Jones, "Five Quick Photoshop Tips for Artists."
Some of the courses available at Folio Academy |
As a traditional artist who has dabbled with digital painting the last few years, I had largely taught myself how to use Photoshop. The Folio courses have been great because they show me different ways to approach digital painting. I really enjoyed Will Terry's approach of building up layers and working from dark to light, similar to traditional painting.
I also learned some new Photoshop tips. For example, when I use a scanned sketch as a basis for a painting and want to keep the sketch lines dark, I have used the "Multiply" function, as well as deleted the background using the Wand tool. I learned from Dani Jones I could do the same thing using the Channels tool. Will's course on making art for apps introduced me to the whole world of animation on Photoshop.
The nice part about these courses is that they are reasonably priced, generally ranging from $10 to $30 for 3-4 hours of solid and valuable information.
Full disclosure: I have enjoyed these courses so much that I have become an affiliate supporter of Folio Academy, which is why I have placed a Folio ad on my sidebar.
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