Join illustrator Tracey Capone as she shows you how to use the Pen, Pencil and Shape tools in Affinity Designer for iPad to create beautifully textured, colorful birds and bird house illustration. What you learn in this class can be used to create any textured vector shape using Designer. Best of all? Everything you need is already in the app!

Welcome everyone! In this class, I will show you how to harness the power of the Pen, Pencil and Rectangle (Shape) Tools to create beautiful, colorful, textural birds, bird houses, and an assortment of complementary botanicals using Affinity Designer. Best of all? Everything you need to create them are already either in Affinity Designer or easily accessible from Affinity Designer and I will show you exactly how to put everything together.

PLEASE NOTE

This class was filmed in V1 of the app. If you are using V2 of the app, you can still follow along, as long as you know where tools are located. The process itself hasn't changed, however the interface is much different. Thank you!

This will be the first in a series of bird classes with subsequent classes teaching you how I create individual bird species like a Kingfisher, Titmouse, Spotted Towhee and more! What you will learn in this first class of the series will provide you with the building blocks for going on to create many more species of birds (or ANY textured vector object) in Affinity Designer for iPad.

What you will learn in this class:

How to use Affinity Designer's stock studio to pull amazing, free use texture images and reference photos right from the app for use in your illustrations.
How to analyze a reference photo of a bird to determine which shapes you will need to pull together to create it's body in Designer.
How to build up the base of a bird and bird house using a combination of shapes in the Rectangle tool as well as Designer's Boolean Operations.
How to harness the power of the Pen and Pencil tools to create odd shapes, and add fun line art to your birds and bird houses.
How to add depth and dimension using texture and shadow on your birds and bird houses.
How to add complementary botanical, wood and other elements to complete your bird illustrations.

What you will need for this class:

An iPad
An Apple Pencil or other stylus
The Affinity Designer app

(Please note: This class is created using the Affinity Designer for iPad app, however if you have a Mac or PC with the Affinity Designer Desktop version, and know where the tools are, you can easily follow along as the process is the same. It is helpful to have a stylus to work with rather than a mouse.)

The downloads for this class can be found at the link in the Projects & Resources section of this class.

When you take this class, you will receive a set of my Woodland Background Assets and Gritty Texture Pixel brushes I created especially for the class. You will also receive a practice sheet I created just for the class that will help you become more comfortable with the Pen tool. (Download link can be found in the Class Project section of the class)

IMPORTANT NOTE: While this class is beginner friendly, and I will show you step by step how to create these illustrations, it is intended for students who are familiar with Affinity Designer and where the tools and studios are located. If you are brand new to Affinity Designer and want to learn the complete layout of the app, I recommend starting with my "Textured Florals in Affinity Designer for iPad" class as I go through the app in great detail.

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Who is your teacher?

Hi! I'm Tracey. Feel free to check out my full Profile here on Skillshare. In a nutshell, I have been a full time artist for over ten years, starting in photography and adding digital illustration somewhere along the way. I am a lover of all things digital illustration who loves to know everything I can about all the apps out there and share my knowledge with anyone who wants to learn. I have an unabashed obsession with adding texture...the more the better. I use Affinity Designer for the majority of my illustration work and have learned many tricks along the way that I can't wait to share with you!

Do you love textural digital illustration as much as I do? Come join my Facebook Group, "Textural Illustration for Digital Artists," where you can share your work, ask questions, get tips and tricks (or share a few of your own) all in a safe, non-judgmental environment. Come join us here at this link.

I can't wait to see what you create using the techniques you learn in this class so, grab your iPad, come join me, and let's get started! Happy Creating!

Carolyn Cummins

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