Watching Cherry do it is not the same as doing it yourself!!
Cherry’s workshops move along at a lovely pace. One minute it is dried cyclamen on white card, the next it is paint swirling in water, then a texture from a dirty window. You follow every word at the time. Then a fortnight later you sit down to try it, and you cannot remember which layer got the blur, or what that filter was called.
This guide is Cherry’s workshop written down so you can work from it. Glynis put it better than I can: “Means that the audience can replicate exactly what Celia did and see the same results. Very reassuring.” She was writing about Celia’s guide, but it is the whole idea.
How the guide is laid out
Before you start. A short welcome, then a contents page so you can go straight to the technique you want. A glossary explains the terms that come up, from Color Dodge to Option Merge Visible, in plain English. A kit list marks each item Essential or Useful, so you know what you need to begin: a shoebox of dried flowers, white card, a small vase and your camera will get you a long way. A setting-up page covers Cherry’s shoeboxes, how she chooses a vase and the camera settings she uses.
Eighteen steps, in the order Cherry worked. Flat lays and losing the shadows. Building a picture on layers. Turning a photograph into a sketch. Two ways to make a frame within a frame. Choosing the background. A flower in ice. Kitchen foil reflections. A texture from a dirty window. Paint in water. Flourish, spatter, square and watercolour brushes. Place card holders. Putting a flower into a bottle. The Rising Sun. Triptychs.
Every step has the same shape, so once you have used one you know your way round them all:
What to do. Numbered instructions to follow with Photoshop open, with the full menu names written out.
Why it matters. The reason behind the step, in Cherry’s own words wherever possible, so you can make your own choices.
Watch out for. The thing that most often catches people out.
New to this? Extra help if a step is new to you. Skip it if you already know.
Going further. Ideas for when you are ready to go further, including tips that people in the workshop shared in the chat.
Each step shows pictures from the workshop, finishes with what you should see at the end, and tells you where it starts in the recording, so when you would rather watch Cherry’s hands than read about them, you go straight there.
Cherry’s own settings. Wherever she gave a number, or one was showing on her screen, it is in a small table: the blur on her frame within a frame, every setting in her inner shadow, the Minimum filter value for her sketches, the depth of water for the paint. They are a sense of scale, not a recipe, because every picture is different, but they save a lot of guesswork.
At the back. A gallery of Cherry’s pictures from the workshop. Every question people asked in the workshop, answered, from where the Flourish brushes come from to how deep the water is. A page called If something goes wrong: fourteen common problems, each with a fix and the step to go back to. Ideas to keep practising, and links to the rest of Cherry’s on-demand workshops. And a one-page summary of all eighteen steps to pin up beside your screen.
What people say about the new guides
The guides were redesigned in October, with the contents page, the step layout and the help pages you see here. Judith, who has a technical writing background, said of the new format: “I’ve bought previous guides and enjoyed using them, but the Sandra Dann guide is in a better league!”
Yours to keep
It is a PDF, yours to keep, print and write on. The recording access runs out; the guide does not.
