Review by Jeff Hamada

Some of the classes I’ve reviewed in the past have been more for experienced people—you had to really be comfortable with Adobe Illustrator etc—but this one is great for anyone with basic knowledge of Photoshop. None of the content has been dumbed down, it just doesn’t require you to know much at all beyond using Photoshop to adjust brightness/contrast levels or drag elements around on different layers.

I’ve been a fan of Gemma O’Brien’s work for a long time, and I’ve always loved that regardless of how detailed and precise it is, she preserves the tiny imperfections that give a handmade work its soul. This class is a great lesson in efficiently combining digital and analog processes without losing the energy of the initial sketches.

Gemma gives useful little tips throughout each lesson—things like shading with the direction of the slant of the letter, or sliding in an extra sheet of white paper behind your tracing layer to quickly check progress.

If you were to only look at Gemma’s finished work the idea of attempting to create something similar might feel impossible. Then you start the class and you realise you don’t have to be able to sit down and have a finished drawing flow right out of your pencil! Gemma’s method involves physical elements—playing around with real flowers and then photographing and re-drawing the elements. This intermediate step turns a potentially daunting project into something very do-able.

Overall I thought this was a great class—really easy to follow. Definitely the more familiar you are with combining elements together in Photoshop the easier it will be to incorporate this collage approach (photographing physical things, arranging, and re-drawing them) into your workflow. It can be done with very little knowledge of Photoshop, but if you’re opening the program for the very first time you can always take a Basics of Photoshop class first.

You can watch the trailer for the class below, and if you’re interested in trying out Skillshare we have a special deal for our readers to  try 2 months of Skillshare Premium for free!