Illustration and Digital Collage for Children's Stories

The world of illustration is much like a children's story, requiring an adventure through a weird and wonderful land filled with possibilities. And who better to guide you on this journey than graphic artist Ana Matsusaki, author of the Portuguese-language book "A colecionadora de cabeças"?

In this course, learn to illustrate children's stories using a mixture of freehand drawing and digital collaging in Photoshop. Just like in Jack and the Beanstalk, Ana plants the seed of creativity helping you build fantastical worlds as if straight from a dream.

Start the course by getting to know Ana Matsusaki, who talks about her career as a graphic artist. Ana shares her biggest influences and gives a detailed explanation of the final project

before going though the materials needed to create your final piece. Using Jack and the Beanstalk as an example, learn how to look for reference materials for your kids' illustrations. With the help of your teacher, produce some initial sketches playing with a few different ideas and compositions.

Now it's time to get to work! Using pencils, stamps, paper cuttings, and India ink, create a collection of customized textures and prints to scan helping you bring your illustrations to life in digital form.

Ana walks you through the selection process for the color palette and teaches you how to combine all your elements and motifs to create a sequence of three digital illustrations using Photoshop. To wrap things up, she shares some tricks for finishing up your piece in the program and gives some invaluable tips on presenting it to potential clients.

Using a classic children's story as your reference, combine manual drawing techniques and digital collaging in Photoshop to create a sequence of three illustrations.

Artists, illustrators, designers, and anyone interesting in exploring new techniques for creating original textures and finishes.

Some basic knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and drawing skills are required for this course.

In terms of materials, you need both black and white paper, tracing paper, EVA foam, scissors, tweezers, ink and an ink pad, a paintbrush, and a graphite pencil, as well as a computer with access to Adobe Photoshop.