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Turn Your Drawing into a Digital Product

Lesson 16 from: Color Techniques for Drawing

Cleo Papanikolas

Turn Your Drawing into a Digital Product

Lesson 16 from: Color Techniques for Drawing

Cleo Papanikolas

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Lesson Info

16. Turn Your Drawing into a Digital Product

Lesson Info

Turn Your Drawing into a Digital Product

So, another way, great way to get your art out of your sketchbook and out into the world is to put it on a website that will print it on objects for you, like Society6. This is really fun, because you can get your stuff printed on a cellphone case. This is a painting I did a while ago. Or, you can get a print made really big of it. Okay. You can get it made on a cellphone case. This is a painting I did a while ago. Or, you can get it printed really big on a poster. This is great, thick paper. And let's see if we have the original here. That's what the original looked like. I think this is a giclee, also has a fancy name. Then, there's all kinds of apparel. We drew all those scissors and spoons before. So, this is just taking my regular pencil drawing, and scanning it in, an uploading it to Society6, and you can put it on your t-shirt. It's a fun design. Or, something you'd never think of. You put your art on a pillow. And then, look, it's also on the back as well, in case one side gets...

dirty. In case you have a dog like mine. (chuckles) So, it's just, it makes it even more inspiring when you start putting it on these products. You can do a fine art canvas. They take your art and wrap it around the edges of a stretcher so it looks like you painted it on the canvas. Smaller prints as well. All kinds of things. I'm gonna show you how to put it on a zipper pouch. So, how do I start? I go to Society6, and first, I log in. So, this little alien up here. I can see my... I've already logged in. I click on me, and I can see my store. So now, I have my very own store out on the Internet. Anybody can buy this stuff (stammers) who wants to, and I have a community of other people who are also selling there, so they get a lot of traffic. A lot more people are gonna see it, 'cause they're not just coming looking for me. First thing I'm gonna do after I create my account is I'm gonna decide what to make. So I've decided that I want to make a carry-all pouch. I'm gonna go and find any carry-all pouch up there, and click on it. And you see the size come up. You can have a small, that's six by five. You can have a medium, that's nine and a half by six, or you can have a large, that's 12 by five, eight and a half. So, I think I'm gonna make a large. And it really matters proportionally what size your art is. So, your choice is make a new piece of art, just the right size, to fit on the object that you wanna make, or be really good at Photoshop, and be able to really adjust things and move 'em around. So, I'm going with making a piece of art the right size. So, I just cut a piece of paper that was 12 and a half by eight and a half to fit my, to fit this zipper pouch. Then, you need to scan this in. Well, how big do you scan it in? Go up to the sell button. Or, I think you can find this, access this also from the home screen. Go all the way down to the bottom, and hit this little button in the menu that says selling. This is where you're gonna find all the questions you have about how do you upload it, what is it? They have a list here that tells all the prices, the amounts of money that you might make if someone buys your product. And under upload your art for additional products, I'm gonna look at carry-all pouches, and it is 4600 by 3000 pixels wide. So now, I have two dimensions. I know how many inches my artwork is, and I know how many pixels my file needs to be. So, I can do the math. Or, what I usually do, I just scan it at a high resolution because then I can use it on all kinds of products. So, I scan my art in at 600 dots per inch. Now, it's sitting on my desktop. So, I'm gonna go to the sell button again. And this comes up. Add a title. Okay. Candy. I'm gonna do short titles 'cause you don't wanna watch me type. Add a description. Colorful candy. If you're really trying to get more traffic in selling, you're gonna look for keywords and try and put in search terms that people are gonna use. You wanna add a category. This is gonna be food, and it's gonna be a painting. Then, you select your file. So, my file is on my desktop, and it is called fruit zipper. Open. And it says it's ready. So, once it's ready, it'll ask you to set your selling price. The first thing it's gonna upload is as artwork for sale. So, that's the prints. That's the canvas. And they want you to make a little profit of it. If it's art, you get to choose your own profit. A lot of the other products come with built-in profit. So, I'm just gonna say, let's see. My small one is gonna be $2. Oh, that was a mini. My medium one is gonna be $4. Small, medium, is $6. And my large is gonna be $8. These are just random prices to get us started, just to get it up there. Then, if you wanted to do some research, compare yourselves to others, see how things are selling, you can always go back in and change it. So, I hit the publish button. We wait for it to publish. Then, pretty quickly, it comes in. Now, this is in a square format. That's a thumbnail. If you upload your art, it will print the art the size your art is. Don't worry about that thumbnail. So, since I know I wanna make a zipper pouch, and that's what I've been planning for, I scroll down here to, it says laptop and iPad skins. At the end, it says carry-all pouches. So, it says, please select a file that is 4600 by 3000. I planned ahead, so mine is already done. So, I'm gonna select the same file, okay? And it uploads. And in a jiffy, it shows up. Now, on the screen, it gives you that great picture of what it's gonna look like on an iPad skin. Gets nice and large. I love that. So, let's get rid of you. Now, I'm gonna go back to my store. I'm gonna see what it looks like on the carry-all pouches. There it is. Let's see. Fruit candy carry-all pouch. Now, the proportions are a little different, so I'm gonna be really careful to check my borders. When I painted this, I painted extra wide borders on here because I knew things could get resized a little bit and cut off and folded around the edges and zoomed. So, if it's on a small, that's a little bit square, but since I left those borders, it does seem to fit. If it's on the large, I think that's the one I wanna order. It looks like it's fitting pretty well. So, that's just planning ahead. Otherwise, you could maybe go back into Photoshop and crop it a little bit more, or adjust it. You could delete it right here, but you really don't want to have to go through that whole process of all your keywords again, so just hit this edit button, and if I hit that, I have the choice of, or if you hover over it I guess, you have the choice of going back in and selecting a new file or changing your keywords or something like that. Then, all you have to do is just click buy, and they'll sell it, they'll send it to you. (chuckles) And you'll get, great, more great products. And you can put your zipper case. You can get all your notebooks you made, and all your pencils you've collected, and all your art supplies. Put 'em in that case, and it really completes the cycle and starts it all over. You're ready to go out and make more art, inspired by the art on your new zipper case pouch.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Color Tools and Materials List
Candy Drawing
Daisy Drawing
Sharks Drawing

Ratings and Reviews

marcelle gray
 

I love this class!!! Cleo is such a natural, enthusiastic and funny teacher. She shares her ideas very freely and makes learning so much fun. She likes to explore her materials by experimenting and also making charts. In art school I always thought this was a little boring, but Cleo makes it fun. It is a good way to warm up and prepare to draw and then begin paint. I have learned to enjoy this process so much by taking this class. I would recommend this class to both beginners and experienced artists.

user 43495d
 

Cleo does start quite nervous, and not very clear in her explanations. Thanks to the guy asking the questions throughout the class…I guess he was as confused as us in the beginning. BUT…the class does get better!! She gets more confident and does give good examples to take your simple drawing to a colorful piece of art you can sell on products or share on social media. I really enjoyed later lessons. And I always say-if I can get a least ONE good advice or trick – then it was not a waste of my $20.

Student Work

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