Undoubtedly, digital art has been a huge trend for a few years now. If you’re an artist or a creative DIY’er like myself, this is easily the best way to get your own designs in a digital space for selling purposes and a way to uplevel the decor in your home with some original art.
Selling digital prints is undeniably one of the best ways to earn passive income these days. It’s also a great way to support small businesses and small artists during this second year of a pandemic! Check out my digital prints here! Once you download my prints, skip to the rest of this tutorial starting with using Canva.com. (Nothing is sponsored in this post, I just love Canva and wanted to share this amazing trick!) So now, let me show you how to make digital prints using Canva!
Step 1:
Start with a design of your choice. This can be from your sketchbook or a digital download. For a full tutorial, we’re going to start with a design from a sketchbook.
Step 2:
Now that you have your chosen design, make sure it is opaque enough to transfer into a digital copy. If it’s a design in pencil, my best recommendation is to go over it with a charcoal pencil. If your design has shading, practice seeing what it looks like through your camera lens. Sometimes, a sketch can look good on paper in-person but when you take a picture, it can be hard to see some shading. Use a softer lead or a harsher shading.
Step 3:
Download “Scanner App” on your phone. The app also says “iScanner.” I have an iPhone, so I’m not sure if this app also works the same on android. Open up the scanner and just skip through all the up-sells they prompt, you can do all of this for free without even signing up for a trial.
- To add a new scan, hit the blue + at the bottom.
- Select camera.
- At the top, make sure it says “manual” mode.
- At the bottom, I select “documents” in “medium”. This just means the quality. If your sketch has a lot of detail, you should select high or HD.
- Snap a picture of your sketch.
- Click on the bottom right to open your scan. Don’t worry too much about cropping. We will do this all inside Canva.
- Save your image by clicking “save” and then “done”.
- It will automatically save as a PDF. Hit the “share” up arrow in the bottom left, and select JPG.
- Open your laptop/desktop (if using MAC you can just airdrop.) If you don’t have mac, just email to yourself in high quality and save to your desktop.
Step 4:
Once your design is saved on your desktop/laptop, open it up and use the “magic tool” to highlight and remove any white space. Save this.
Step 5:
Go into Canva.com and in the search bar, type in “Poster”, enter. Click on “Create a Blank Poster.” On the left menu bar, select “uploads”, “upload media”, “from device”, and select your saved design.
Drag it onto your blank poster and start your cropping/editing. Make sure it is centered, even, away from direct edges, and the way you want it to look when it’s printed.
Step 6:
Click on “Print Posters” at the top right and go through the checkout steps. This wants to make sure none of your designs will get cut-off in the printing process. You can order and print directly through Canva and they will mail it to you in a tube within a week!
Watch the video
That’s it! I love how each one of my designs turns out using this process. Let me know what you think in the comments below, or what you want to see next!
As always, please share and subscribe so I can keep creating fun and valuable content just like this!
