Transcripts
1. Quick Class Intro: There's something magical about the delicate beauty and intricate details of flowers. But let's face it. Sometimes they can be super intimidating to draw. Hi. I'm Lisa Glanz, an illustrator and surface designer. One of my favorite thing is to draw are flowers. In this class I'm going to walk you through my approach to drawing botanicals, and include some tips and advice on how to tackle complex elements like floral centers, and some weird angles you might encounter when drawing from reference. The two part class includes drawing lessons that don't require any fancy materials, so a pencil and paper will do just fine, or you are going to follow along on your iPad. In the second half of the class, we hop over to Adobe Illustrator, where we'll be vectorizing our drawings, arranging into lovely bouquets, and then finally applying our botanicals to some fun design projects. By the end of this class, you'll feel more confident drawing flowers and you'll learn how to repurpose your illustrations and create work you'll be proud of. I can't wait to get started, so I'll see you in class.
2. PART ONE: Basic Shapes for Beginners: In this first lesson, we're going to do some basic shape drawing. I want to show you the technique that I use when I tackle botanical drawing. I want to show you how you can break down a complicated flower into simple shapes so things don't feel so overwhelming when you see all the complicated and complex shapes that we see in nature. I'll be using Procreate for this exercise, you don't have to, you can use a pencil and paper or pen and paper or any medium that you feel comfortable using. I just find that using Procreate for this exercise is much easier to show you the screen and the flower at the same time. The first thing we're going to do is create a new document. I'm just going to pick a 300 by 300 document and I'll be using a gray color to sketch the linework. I'll be including a botanical sketching brush that I created for this class, you'll find it in the Project and Resources download area that you're welcome to use to follow along with me. We're going to start with the basic flower, something that isn't too intimidating. But what I'm hoping to achieve from this class is to show you how to get into the habit of finding the basic shape of things so that you can actually tackle a drawing that initially might be quite intimidating, but just seeing the basic shape of something and breaking it down hopefully will make it less intimidating and much easier to tackle and begin the drawing. The first shape that I notice, and I'm sure you do too, is a circle shape. The other thing I want to mention is when you're finding shapes, it's very important to notice the relationship between the shapes. For example, this circle is lot smaller than the outer circle, so how does it relate to each other and where do they sit within each other. That's another important thing to note. We definitely want to bear that in mind when we start drawing because often the proportions can actually drop us up. I'm going to start with the center. Then bearing in mind my proportion of the center of this, is the outer circle, I'm going to loosely draw the outer circle. I'm just plotting it to this point. Again, these are not drawings that mostly we going to use, this is just to warm up. We want to plot out where the petals meet. Now would say something like that and say that one's actually about there. I'm going to start with the one that I see as being on the top and I'm just roughly following the shape. I keep looking back there and there as I go because this one is now going to overlap that one, I'm not going to finish that line, and without actually using my pencil, I'm just going to start the line, imaginary line and it's going to come out probably about there. Even though there isn't a jiggly birthday, I want to give the impression that it's a soft pedal, so I'm using my own artistic interpretation. Sorry, let me use this one. You'll see over here actual depths, like has a dippy birthday and again petals dots there. If you're not comfortable doing an imaginary line, please feel free to go ahead and actually draw the line. This petal has quite a unique shape compared to the others and even has an overlapping bit there. I'm just going to draw that in and finish it off at some vein work just to show the, I don't know what you call them, they're not really veins but you know what I mean. I would say that that guy is finished for a sketch. Now, we're going to move on to another shape. Let's choose it on. I'm going to work on this one because it's unusual, it's not a perfect circle. Let's create a new layer, turn the one off. What do we observe? I can see this like a cup shape over here that has a semicircle, finish over here. Then Catia wouldn't even know what you call this a moon, half-moonish, maybe like a squished oval. I'm going to start with that part first because that's the center of the flower. I'm very roughly just plotting my shape. Then you'll see, you could have made the assumption that the flower actually started here, but that's not true. It actually starts behind the, cuts through that cup shape. We're going to do that and plot out a squished oval. Say that's about right. Then, I also see a fanning art of this cup area, so I'm going to actually plot that as well because I want my eye to be able to bear that in mind as I start sketching. Then we can do another count of the petals to make sure that we have an idea of what's going on, so I see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 but there's basically four that dominate this part, your eye sees these four and these other two at the back but just my neutral areas at the back, so you're going to bear that in mind. Again, we want to see the relationship of the shapes with each other because if you take care of the relationship with each other, then it makes it easier for your brain to actually understand what you see and the shapes that you going to draw. I just want to add that in, just something like that. The first main petal, how he say's the most dominating and he's got something like that. I'm just loosely plotting at this point. This guy does something like that and then he comes down. The point of all these exercises isn't necessarily for species accuracy, what we doing is we are gathering information for our brain to store. We're also trying to train our brain to see shapes a lot easier. So it's about basically storing all the stuff we going to do now, our brains are collecting the information as we're doing and we're going to call upon it later on. Every time you tackle a drawing, a botanical drawing, perhaps without an art reference or with reference, you really have quite a lot of this info stored in your brain from your previous exercises so that we want to do, we want to build up this reserve in our minds so that next time when we do the botanical drawing, it's not so scary. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to start with this area first. I'm going to ahead and actually fill in some detail. I see a little spiky boot and spiky boot, so I'm just going to make a suggestion of those. These petals have lovely little frilly bits at the top or at the end of each one, so I want to try and indicate that and that's it. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to find the same type of flower and why that's important for tackling your botanical drawings. See you there.
3. Finding the Centre: In this lesson, we're going to tackle finding the center of the flower. That's super important if you're dealing with flowers that have weird angles, or flowers that are quite complex. In this particular instance you'll see that the flower is sitting three-quarter and there's foreshortening happening here in the front which can be quite scary to deal with. The petals are in weird shapes and different shapes. The best thing to do is actually start with your basic shape like we did in the previous lesson, and then find the center of that shape that corresponds with the flower that you see. I'm going to go ahead and sketch out my shape. I see an oval, something like that. Instead of the center being there, it's actually really low, which is about there. I also see that through that center, if you can imagine the 3D, it pulls through to the bottom base of the flower, and that's the line that I actually also want to draw. We're probably looking at something like that. Then I see the little stem that does that. Just by plotting that out, we're already starting to see a shape of a flower. What I like to often do is plot out all the other interesting goodies that I want to include. If I want to include these little spiky bits in relation to the center, that one in this probably setting something like that. The other one sitting there, there, this one is almost straight ahead and inside like that. Plotting out all these important points is already telling my brain where things are. Now, I'm just plotting out the main petal area. I find not only using the word plotting and the action of plotting to be useful because what it does for my brain, it actually makes me feel less intimidated by it because all I'm really doing is plotting points. I actually use the same technique when I draw people, especially with complex limbs, and hands, and feet, and all that kind of thing like you never no where to place them in relation to the body and the proportion, I'll always just use dots. This last petal probably does something like that. We've plotted out basic petal and spiky bit positions. Now that I've drawn that petal, this plot that I actually had is a little awful, but at least it gave me starting point. I'm going to get a new layer going. If you're using a pen and paper or pencil and paper, you can use tracing paper or you can use a really thin like 40 gram paper to lay over your original sketch. I'm just going to bring that down so it doesn't dominate. I'm going to start with the center first and draw these little stamen jabbers. Just something like that. I'm just suggesting it. Again, don't make assumptions because assumption's often can be wrong. Instead of us drawing like, we might have gone for like a main shape, hofmin shape, but actually what it's doing is it's dipping. It's that dip thus giving us the illusion that things are going in. That's what we're going to do, we are dipping. Adding these little lines is also going to give us the illusion that things are going in. I don't like that shape, to me it is weird even though it is what it is. I'm going to cheat that, but obviously what's happening is there's a [inaudible] there, so I want to add that in. What I'm going to do is just curve that because for me that's a more attractive petal. Come down, and then this guy does like a little jiggly bit. This guy comes round. We've got a nice little coll cut happening there as well. Just stick [inaudible] I'm going to give it a go, but that looks yucky. That's better. Then finish it off with the base. It's got little hairs. I like the little hairs, so I'm going to add them in. It's just suggestions, it doesn't have to be perfect. I'm just going to add a little shadow just to give the illusion that that's where the depths is. Turn off the other layer and have a look. So just by tackling, finding that center first, broke down this complex angle of this flower much easier for us to deal with. We're going to do another quick one. This is the opposite of the one that we just did, the other one was going in, this one is shooting up. Again, I see an oval, but it's almost a circle. It's not as overly as the other one, very rough. My center, it's actually quite very much in the center almost, but what's giving the illusion that it's moving that way is that the top part of its stamens are actually very close to that side of the petals. So in this case we're actually finding the center of the center. Let's start with this part first. I would say the actual bottom center is there and we have that shape. Then if you can see that circularly shape happening here, so the center of that is about there. That gives us the idea of where all these little middle bits are going to be. Again, we're going to plot. I'm going to start with the center like I did before. These are just suggestion, I'm big on suggestion, not super accurate detail. That's it. That gives you a better idea of how you can tackle more complex angles of flowers. In the next lesson, speaking of centers, we're going to start looking at all the lovely centers that you get in flowers and how you can use them to make your flowers more special. See you there.
4. Drawing Beautiful Centres: In this lesson, we're going to tackle the Santa flowers as you guys know the Santa flowers are amazing. There's so many variations and intricate details, some of them are just incredible. I want to show you how I approach a little bit more complex ones, but still try and keep the essence of what they are. We going to start again with basic shapes, [MUSIC] and then I'm also going to draw the oval of the overall stamens at that you see just to, again remember, we need to plot things out. I would say it's like that this is just a rough guide to help our brain.[MUSIC]. What we've got here are plots, are main plots. Your outer little stamen is going to be about there and other one's going to be about there. These are just a rough idea. On the next layer, I'm going to start with the actual stamens because to me that's the most important part of this flower. Just roughly and randomly because we don't want to follow it precisely. Because then you are probably going to get bogged down and overwhelmed. But what we do want to do is capture that essence so you can see your things are random, but they generally fall within circle, semicircle, oval, not semicircle like an oval shape which we want to keep that overlap what we originally drew. Then literally again, just going to suggest the lines were not going to draw each one. Off you see the ones that are sticking out the most, those we do want to complete. I'm just filling as I go whatever field it needs it. At this stage I'm relying a little bit on my instincts. I have stopped looking at the actual picture all the time. Because I find if you do that with things this complex, you try and follow them to accurately, which can be overwhelming. We just want to suggest it like that when they're goes skew there I want that in. I'm just going to add another one there. The front page tools I want to tackle first.[MUSIC]. Now I'm just going to make a few them a little bit more defined [MUSIC]. Now we going to tackle a different one, something that's have a bowl effect to it with also lot going on. I'm going to turn that off add a new layer. What I'm going to do is I'm going to skip the petal stage because I think you guys are getting the idea of how to tackle that. I'm just going to tackle the center and see if we can achieve the same effect, will just give a suggestion of what the center looks like. You can see is like again an oval. In this case, we need to find the center of the center. That would be your center of your flower at the bottom, the base area. Then there's another ovaly part here where little stamens clicked. Then there's a center point, which is probably something like that. That's going to help us develop our shape. Whoops, wrong layer. Like we did before we just going to suggest these seeds, just randomly and you'll see there's a few that are a stray so to speak. They're not all the same shape, which is important to note. The center here gets quite complex, a whole bunch of them there so we're just making a suggestion of it [MUSIC]. As I did with the previous one. I'm now not looking anymore at the reference because I want my instincts take over. By adding the dark shadow area, creating that 3D effect. You're starting to create the form[MUSIC]. That give you an idea of how you can tackle a complex center. You'll notice that we weren't 100 percent accurate, but we captured the essence of the center of the flower. In the next lesson, we're going to tackle drawing from real life. I'll see you there.
5. Draw From Real Flowers: In this lesson, we are going to actually draw from a real life flower. You're welcome to follow along with my flower that I have here. We can get your own. But the main thing I want to show you is how I am dealing with complex little bands like this. There's a lot going on in these branches and it can feel overwhelming, when we first look at it. I want to show you how I would tackle something like this. You'll notice I'm now pencil and paper. I'm actually going to use pencil and paper for the class project because I want to scan that in and retain a pencil sketch look. But again, you are welcome to use your iPad and use a brush that I gave you. Just remember that when you're using your iPad, you want to use a really high resolution file because Illustrator will trace it much better. You can check out my other class that actually discussed that why I use procreate with illustrator. All the details are included in that class. For this particular class and project, I'm going to use my pencil and paper and then scan it in and vectorize. The first thing I notice about this is the top obviously has all the buds that collect and each branch is got smaller leaves and going all different directions. This particular branch, I'm definitely going to use my very loose approach to draw in Botanicals. I find that less stressful and it's all about the suggestion, as I mentioned before in the class. It's all about the suggestion of the actual flower and not being accurate. We're going to start with this blue branch over here, and I'm very lightly with my pencil, just making marks. I'm not trying to actually be accurate, just want to get the essence of it and we're starting with the little buds first. I can notice the branches do that and you'll see. I'm doing quick hand movements to indicate the leaves and just lightly with my pencil plotting that line. The leaves here quite a bit bigger and they going in all different directions, and there's like a whole bunch going on there. I'm going to bring this one up. As much I am looking at the branch for reference. Because I've already studied it and had a look at it. I'm not spending too much time looking at it, I'm using it as reference, because I want to basically capture what my mind and my brain remembers. Because I find when you do that, you get more whimsical results and things aren't as accurate and refined, unless of course that is the lucky going for. But with my work, I like to be loose. We might just do one more coming off like that and because we are going to be vectorizing this, if we don't like particular areas, we can always just delete them. I think I'm going to stop there. What I might do is go in and just clean up here and just to add a little bit more definition, just to show the difference between the actual flower bud and the leaves. I want to stop there, I think it's done. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how I tackle drawing files from memory, I'll see you there.
6. Drawing From Memory: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how I tackle drawing botanicals from my imagination. It's actually more from my memory rather than imagination, although sometimes I do just wing it. But in this instance I'm going to show you the technique I use when looking at reference images. What I tend to do is, I study them, I see the shapes and the petals and I take in as much information as I can. Then I literally put the image away and then try and tackle the drawing on my own. The reason why I do that is I want to basically get my own impression of the flower and my own interpretation without using reference. I find the results to be way more whimsical if I approach it that way and not so accurate. Although there's nothing wrong with accuracy it's just that in this particular style, I want a loose whimsical result. The first thing I do is I observe. In this instance, I can see there's this lovely accent to this flower. I can also see that the actual center is off-center like we did in the other exercise that we drew early on. There is some lovely curl to these petals. I'm going to use my basic techniques of starting with the shape, moving onto my center and then just slowly plotting out the petals. I've had a look and I'm now going to put this away. Because I'm using a pencil and that's actually the final scan that I want to scan in, I'm going to plot my lines with a color pencil, a very light color pencil. This helps me to see where my basic lines are, but it doesn't actually scan in. That's the result we want. You can use something like a blue or green. I'd stay away from red because red seems to pick up too much, so rather stick to the lighter colors. We're going to start with basic shapes like we have been doing. Then plot out the center. If that dark area picks up on the scan, I'll just clean it up later, so I'm not going to worry too much about that. Then we had the stamens were a ball themselves. We had petals coiled quite high up in the front. Probably do something like that. I'm just very lightly teasing out my petals at this stage. Just getting a feel for where I want to put them. I'm just adding some detailed line work to the backside of the petal. I'm going to go ahead and do a few more just the same way I did this. I'm going to do a combination of flowers and buds and leaves and little whimsical fronds, just that I've variation to choose from when we finally do put our arrangement together. Then once we're done with our pencil work, we can scan it in, factorize and start arranging. I'll see you on the other side of this.
7. Draw a Quick Washi Tape & Ribbon: Before we hop over to scanning, I just quickly want to draw a kind of like a washy tape shape that we're going to use later on in our arrangement, and also just like a little simple ribbon that I'm going to use a kind of like the string that I'm going to use around one of our arrangements. For the washy tape, I'm just going to draw the rectangle and some jagged edges just to indicate the tape. I'm just making sure that I close the edges as much as possible because we are going to full that later in Illustrator. For the string, I'm just going to draw a simple sort of round sausages, and indicate the knot, probably something like that, and then a string kind of hangs down, and then the back comes up, and the same for the other one and maybe one little thing that comes about, just the end of the tie. So nothing too fancy is just an indication, an idea of string. Okay, so I'm going to start scanning off to this and I will see you on the computer.
8. PART TWO: Scanning: I've gone ahead and opened my scanning software and hit the preview button. I use a Canon scanner and I'll include all the details of the scanner that I use in the class description. The main thing to remember with scanning is that we're going to scan it at a higher percentage, like increase the size of the actual image and a 300 dpi. You don't need a fancy scanner, but you do need a scanner that's going to pick up all your lovely details that you've included in your drawing. You can use your smartphone over. I do find that that doesn't pick up all the details in my drawings. I definitely prefer using a scanner, but if you don't have one, you of course welcome to go ahead and use your smartphone to take really good quality high resolution image, it's going to be your best bet. The main specs that we need to bear in mind, we don't need color obviously, so you can just select Grayscale on your scanner. The upper resolution needs to be at least 300 dpi. On a page like this basically, there's a whole bunch of scans that we need to deal with. I'm just going to go ahead and select areas of my page and not scale the whole one, because that's going to end up being a little too large of a file, because we increasingly actual percentage. We want to go up to 250 percent at least. The rest of settings I basically just have on the default. I'm going to go ahead and select an area, and hit ''Scan''. My scanner really isn't that fast, I'll just speed it up. I'm going to work through all the drawings on this page and all the other drawings that I put together, and I will see you in the next lesson for vectorizing.
9. Vectorizing Your Artwork: I've opened Adobe Illustrator and created an A3 document. It doesn't matter what size you choose at this point, because we are going to be changing the size in a minute. With the Adobe Illustrator document still up, I'm coming over to a folder that I have all my scans that I previously scanned, and then I'm going to select it all. With that illustrator document in the background, I'm just simply going to drag and drop. It might take a while because there are several images. Then with all of these scans still selected, I'm going to come over to object, art board and fit to selected art. Now what we want to do is we want to separate each of these images into their own layer. This is going to be much easier for us to trace and to actually organize all our work so we don't get overwhelmed. With all of them still selected, I'm going to come over to my layers panel. If you don't have that up you just go to Windows and layers. Then from the flyout menu, I'm going to choose release to layers sequence. What that does is it creates a layer for each and every single image, which is fantastic because now all we need to do is turn them all off and just leave the one on so that we can start tracing each individual image as we go. With the first one up and selected, I'm going to come over to my image trace panel. If you don't have that app, just again, go Windows, image trace. I'm going to start playing around with some settings and see what I like, and go for the results that I'm after, which is a sketchy hand-drawn look. With the preset set to default, I'm just going to start with sketched art. If you don't have that on your Adobe Illustrator, it's fine. Don't worry about it. The main thing you want to remember is that this needs to be black and white, and the rest of the settings we're now going to fiddle with. If this section isn't up, you'll probably need to just expand the advanced error. The first thing we want to make sure is that ignore white is on. We only want to create false. We don't want strikes because that's going to cause a whole bunch of problems for us. I'm actually going to start with the setting that is sketched art. But again, you'll see that, all the settings that I mentioned that are important [inaudible]. Full needs to be on. Snap curves to lines can be off and ignore a white definitely needs to be on. If that isn't ticked on what's going to happen is Illustrator is going to trace the black and the white which we don't want. Under threshold I'm going to bring it up to about 180 and see what happens. Now we're going to start seeing the actual image that we drew and I want the parts to be quite a snug fit because we want to retain all these little grungy, sketchy bits and we wanted to keep all that lack sketchy hand-drawn fields. I'm going to bring it up quite high. Probably to about 95. I sometimes even go as high as a 100 percent depending on the look that I'm going for. For the corners, I found that 60 percent is quite a good sweet spot to achieve the look that I'm going for. We're just going to take it up to about there. Then for the noise, the lower we go, the more Illustrator is going to pick up all the little dots and specs and grungy bits and the higher we go, the more it's going to ignore all those little, some people would call imperfections, but for me, that's the part I actually like. I'm going to bring the noise right down to one, and you'll see automatically, let's just zoom in a dash. I'm going to bring it back to where it was because I want you to see what the difference is. Illustrator as you can see, Illustrator is actually taken out all those extra grungy bits, which we don't want, we want to keep them. I'm going to bring the noise down to one. You'll see it starts picking up all those faded lines that we want. I think I'm going to take the threshold up a dash more. That's looking pretty good. I'm happy with those results. I'm going to go ahead. Actually, just maybe dashed down. Yeah, that's better. I'm going to go ahead and save that as a preset and the reason I'm doing that, because I don't want to have to keep doing this every single time. I'm going to go ahead under custom, you'll see a flower of menu and save as new preset. We're going to call it Pencil class. I'm going to say two because I've already created one. The next time you trace your preset will be in the drop-down menu, which is fantastic. It's a good starting point. Now that I'm happy with that we need to expand it. Right at the top you'll see a button next to trace and results and you're just going to hit expand. There you've vectorized your first drawing. Now I'm going to work my way through all the others and I'll see you on the other side.
10. Cleaning up Your Artwork: In this lesson, we're going to clean up our scans. We going to start grouping each individual Botanical Drawing that we've created into its own group so that we can actually start using it in our arrangements. But the first thing I want to do is just scale everything down because we don't need them so big anymore. I'm just going to turn all the layers back on and select everything which is Command A on my keyboard and come over to Object Transform Scale. I'm just going to bring that down to 40 percent. Now the next thing I want to do is actually align them so that we can see all of our drawings. I'm going to bring anyone, you can just randomly selects anyone, bring it out to the side and bring out the next one. Maybe just a dash more. Then I'm going to select them all again. In my Align panel, if it's not open, you just go to Window Align. I'm going to use the distribution spacing, I'm just going to hit the Horizontal distribution. What we didn't do was choose the correct Align to. Make sure that you have Align to Selection on. We're just going to use a horizontal one. That just basically distributes everything evenly. I can see that I actually needed to drag out my objects even more. This is just the way we can see all of our drawings in one go. That's better. Again, with that selected, we are going to come over to Object, Artboard and Fit to Selected Art. I just want to you make it dash bigger, that Artboard. I'm hitting Shift O on my keyboard, which brings up the Artboard tool. I'm just expanding it slightly. Okay, now we can see all of our drawings and we're ready to clean them up and add some colors shapes for the actual botanicals. I'm going to show you exactly what I mean in a minute. I'm going to work on the big flower for now. Let me zoom in. Okay, so you can see we have quite a lot of little speckles going on. I actually prefer these little speckles. I think it adds that hand-drawn look and that grungy vector look to your drawings. I want to leave those in, but obviously we want to clean up here. The best way to do that is using our Lasso tool, which is Q on your keyboard, if you don't want to bring up your shortcuts. I'm just going to bring this Layer panel over. That's fine. I'm going to hit "Q" on my keyboard, and that's my Lasso tool. But first what we need to do is what I actually should have done before that is going to isolation mode. The reason why we're doing that, because we just want to fiddle with the actual drawing that we're working on at the moment. I'm going to select with my direct Select tool and I'm going to double-click. Apologies, it's not the direct Select tool, it's just the Selection tool. We're going to double-click going to isolation mode. Now we can freely work just on this drawing without affecting anything else. I'm going to hit Q on my keyboard to bring up the Lasso tool. I'm simply just going to select this and hit Delete and select this and hit Delete. I'm going to probably remove these because I don't like them. Actually, I might keep that one, so I want to keep that one. I'm going to hit Option on my keyboard and go over again, so de-selects it and then delete the rest. These I want to take out and these I want to take out. Okay, I'm pretty happy with that, so that guy is all good. Now we're going to move on to one that actually has more than one scan. Let's go with those two. Again, you'll see all these little grungy bits. I want to keep that. I think the texture has that extra element to the drawing, which I think is quite nice. Okay, so I'm going to double-click to go into isolation mode. When I hit Q on my keyboard and just roughly draw around. Now I just want to group all those little points that we've selected. That's Command G on my keyboard. Then I'm going to select all and holding down the Shift key, make sure that I'm in my Selection tool, I'm just going to de-select that new group that we made. Now we have a selection of everything else apart from the new group that we made and now we want to group that. I'm going to hit Command G and come out of isolation mode by either double-clicking here or clicking on the Gray Bar at the top. I'm going to select that. Obviously it's still the group because remember we went into isolation mode, so it's still seeing this as a group. I want to ungroup that, which is Command Shift G on my keyboard. Now you have two groups that you can use. I'm going to go ahead and work my way through all my drawings and I'll see you on the other side. I've gone ahead and cleaned up all my botanical and they're all individually grouped. Now the next thing I want to do is create a fill shape around the main botanical areas. The reason why I'm doing that is if we had to put the one shape on top of the other, you wouldn't be able to see the leaf anymore. I want to create a fill. Just that when I do place it on top of that one, it actually blocks out the underneath elements. The best thing to do that is to keep everything neat and on its own layer. I'm sure you know by now that I love my layers. I'm going to create a new layer, which is the fill layer just to keep my things separate. Under the Layers panel and the Flag menu, I'm going to go create a new layer. Let's call this Fill. You can call it anything and just bring that below the layers that have all the botanicals. I'm just going to create a new color well in fact, I have created a new color. You can choose any color you like, because we're going to change that at some stage. What I'm going do is I am going to use my Pencil tool, which is N on my keyboard. Make sure that I have the right colors selected. Then I'm just simply going to start drawing with my Pencil tool and just follow the shape of the leaf. Basically work my way around all the edges. We're going to wait till the end, until we reach the beginning again, until you see a little note show up. If I zoom in, I'm sure you will see that. I actually want to bring that whole thing down as well. With that still selected, I'm just going to redraw the shape and run it along the edge of the other one. If you want to make sure that your shape stay selected as you're drawing, with the Pencil tool selected, you just going to hit Enter on your keyboard and that brings up your pencil Tool Options. You'll see I have mine quite close to the accurate because I wanted to be fairly accurate to my mouse movements. I have Keep selected clicked on. The rest of them I don't really play with but you welcome to experiment with them. But those are just the two that I am basically focused on. If you realize you've made an error here and there, that's not a problem. We can just go in afterwards and and fix it up. Over there I just want to change that and actually clean that up. We're going to move on to the next area. For this work, I use my iPad and Apple Pencil. I use an application called Astropad to essentially link my iPad to Illustrator. If you have an iPad and an Apple pencil, I highly recommend doing that. It saves you so much time. You also tend to get more accurate results. Okay, I think I'm happy with that. I'm going to group that. But first I'm just going to lock the top layer and group, unlock the top layer, select the Botanical and the Fill at the same time and group that. Now we have a grouped item that we can basically use for our arrangements and it's ready to go. I'm going to work my way through all the others and I will see you on the other side.
11. Create a Lovely Simple Art Print: We're going to dive into creating some projects and arrangements with our flowers. I'm going to start by creating a very simple art print, something that you can create for your own home or you can upload it onto a print on demand website like Society6 and sell it. But the basic idea is that we want to create a very simple sophisticated print just as a warm-up exercise before you get stuck into the full arrangement. I'm going to be using this illustration that I created from the realistic flower that we drew. I'm going to copy it by going command C on my keyboard, and then I'm going to hit command N to create a new document. I'm going to call it Botanical print. I'm going to use a document that's 200 by 280, you can of course use any size that you like. But the main focus is I want a portrait shape. I'm going to hit "Enter" on my keyboard. Then I'm going to paste the flower into my artboard, which is command V on my keyboard. Then the next thing I want to do is actually clear the swatches in my swatches panel. The reason why I'm doing that is I just prefer to work cleanly with my swatches and get rid of all the ones that I don't use. The quickest way to do that is to come over "Actions", and from the pre-made actions that you get with Adobe Illustrator you just going to choose Delete Unused Panel Items and hit the little "Play" button. It basically deletes all the additional swatches and other items you are not using in your panels. The next thing I want to just chat about is some color pallets. With these botanicals I find that the subtle color palette works really well with them. So what I recommend is choosing a very light color as your background color and then choosing a matching darker color. The general rule, of course which you can break, but this is just my general rule that I like to use, is that, I try to match the tone of the lighter color. For example, here is a pinky color that would be used for the background and then the darker color would be a brownie golden color. The same for this is like a muted blue color and then you'll see that the darker color is more of a blue black. Then these of course, are far more neutral colors. I'm going to take all of these swatches and bring them into my working document. What I'll do is I'll include this swatch documents in your download area in the class, so you're welcome to grab these as well. I'm just going to select all by pressing command A on my keyboard, and then I'm going to copy which is command C, come over to my working document and then just paste anywhere on the artboard. Because these are global colors they will automatically appear in your swatches. You'll know they're global color by the little triangle you see on the bottom right. If I just double-click on one of them just to show you where you can turn that on when you create a swatch, it's just this area over here. Just make sure that that's ticked on every time you create a swatch and that'll creates a global color. That just means that the next time you paste it into a new working document it will automatically appear in your swatches panel. I'm going to go ahead and delete these because we don't need them. Then the next thing we want to do is start creating layers. Again, just to remind you, I love using layers because I find they're much neater to work with and easier to edit your artwork. At the flyout menu, I'm just going to click on that little three hamburger sign there and just select New Layer and call it Background. Bring it to the bottom. On the background layer I'm going to start drawing my actual background color. Over to the left hand side of my toolbar I'm coming to the rectangle tool, which is M on your keyboard. I'm just going to click on the top left hand corner, just once, and then enter in the dimensions of my artboard. To make sure that we are actually zero zero, I'm going to come over to my Transform Panel, if you don't see the Transform Panel then you'll find everything under Window Transform. You'll see it's actually not on zero zero, so we want to make sure that it is zero zero. What I actually want to do, and that looks great as it is, but what I actually want to do is create a white border. The quickest way to do that is in your Transform panel we're going to make sure that the reference point is in the center. Under the width I'm just going to hit minus 15 because I want a seven and a half millimeter border all the way around. It'll automatically shrink the rectangle to the exact size you want, and the same for the height. Essentially I'm using that area as a calculator, and so I don't have to think about what is 200 minus 15, even though that number is pretty easy to figure out. But yeah, this is a great trick in case you don't have a calculator at hand and you have some tricky numbers. I'm happy with the background. I'm just going to rename the layer at the top, Botanical. Now we're going to stop applying some color to our botanicals. First, I'm going to lock my background layer. This is why I love using layers so much because you can control everything much easier that way. Then coming over to my Swatches panel, I just want to zoom in so we can see our drawing better. You'll see all the little speckle grungy bits, those are the parts love. I'm going to keep them because I want to look hand-drawn. Now I'm going to use my Magic Wand to select all the black area, which is gong to be the easiest way to recolor the line work. Hitting Y on my keyboard brings up my Magic Wand, or it's the third tool on the left-hand side. I'm just going to select the black area by zooming in a bit, but just selecting one of the areas off of the drawing that's black. You'll see automatically it's now selected all the black of my drawing. Then I'm going to apply a color which is going to be the brownie color. The same for the pinky color that we used for the shapes, that I actually want white. Now we've recolored our drawing with not too much effort. Now I'm just going to move that into position, enlarge it slightly by holding down my Shift key to make sure that I enlarge it proportionately. I'm just dragging the corner out slightly. I think I wanted something like that. Now on a new layer, I'm going to add some text. We can lock the botanical layer for now just to make sure that we don't accidentally draw on that layer. Then coming over to my Text tool, I'm just going to draw a text box. You'll see it automatically will fill it with some placement text. Then come over to my Character panel. If it's not up, again you'll find all your panels under the Window menu. I'm going to choose a font called Lulo, you can of course choose any font you like. Then I'm going to sync to that, which is Shift and command C on my keyboard, or if you don't want to use a shortcut, you just come over to your paragraph and choose the center alignment. Then I'm just going to type in fynbos. Fynbos is a word that we use here in South Africa to describe a particular type of plant, which this plant was a fynbos. I'm just going to type that in. Then I'm going to apply a color, coming over to my Swatches panel and I'm going to apply the same color I used for the line work. Just zoom out a dash. I probably want to bring it down in size. Maybe something like 10, maybe more. Then just for fun, I want to add my logo underneath that. I have a document were I keep all variations of my logo, all I have to do is just open that up and then just select the one that I want to use. In this instance, I want to use this one over here. Again command C on my keyboard to copy it, and make sure we're in the text layer which we are, and command V. Then I'm just going to scale that down. Again, holding down my Shift key, making sure that everything scales proportionately. Then I'm going to apply the same color, and it already is applied because that's a very common color I use in my work. Then we're going to sync to this on the artboard, making sure that it is the same to our art print. Coming over to our Align panel. If it's not at the top which it should be, but if it's not, you can just come over to Align panel on the side. Again, if it's not there you will find it under Window. Make sure that under the Align To, you have it on Aligned To Artboard. Then we're just going to hit the "Center" button, and that will align all your text in the middle of your artboard. I'm just going to bring that down the dash. Then I'm just going to convert this particular font to path. The reason why I'm doing that, because this font is actually one of those 3D fonts, so the very top one that I'm using will be slightly off center. I actually want to make sure that it's completely in the center. In order to do that I need to convert this to path. I'm going to go to my Type menu and select Create Outlines. That will automatically convert your text into an object. Now I can hit Center again and you'll see it's shifted slightly. Now it's perfect. I'm just going to bring that down, and this needs to be scaled down and dash more. Then unlock my Botanical layer. Then just fiddle slightly. I think what I might do is just move that little splurge because it's distracting. I'm just going into isolation mode every time I double-click. I'm just going to bring that down in size and maybe even move it to about there. Yeah, it looks better. That's it. We've created our first art print with one of your lovely illustrations you created. In the next lesson, we're going to start building a bouquet. I'll see you there.
12. Arranging Your Flowers Into a Bouquet: In this lesson, we are going to be tackling, arranging a big bouquet, with some of the illustrations we created. I'm going to go ahead and pick a few and bring them into a document that I'm going to create. I'm just going to randomly select some that I think I want to use. Maybe that guy, and maybe some of these. Then I'm going to copy, which is Command C on my keyboard, and then create a new document which is Command N. I'm probably going to choose 210 by say 280, and at this stage I'm just going to keep with CMYK 300 dpi. Let's just your standard settings for printing. I'm going to hit, "Okay", and just paste my botanicals, zoom out a little bit, just so that I can see them all. Then I'm just going to play some on my art board for now, something like that. Just one more thing I want to mention when creating your illustrations, it's a good idea to create contrast. What I mean by that is, some of them are solid kind of sketched in areas of pencil work, and some of them obviously we've created shapes of color. For this instance, I'm going to use these as my contrast elements. That just creates a nice balance and an overall bouquet. The next thing we want to do is what we did previously, I want to get rid of all of those goodies, I don't like them. I'm just going to use the action again, and then come over to my color palette, select all, which is Command A and then Command C to copy, come over again and paste. They should appear in my swatches panel. Yeah. There they are. Then once again, we're going to do the same thing. I'm going to create a background layer. A quick shortcut for that is I'm going to hold down my Option key on my keyboard and hit this Create Layer icon in the Layers panel. What that does is it creates a new layer, but it also brings up the layer options panel at the same time. That's much easier for typing in your name or adding any additional info that you want for your layer. We're just going to call that background. Do the same, bring it to the bottom and draw a rectangle, which is 210 by 280. Make sure we have it right to the edge, and let's do that. I think in this instance, I want a white border again. I'm going to do exactly the same as I do previously and just use the calculate. Make sure I'm in the center reference points, and I think I want probably just to find more border , all the way around, so that's minus 10, and it's 280 minus 10. I'm going to choose the gray muted palette for this one. Using my I picker, because I have the swatches right here, I'm just going to use the I picker, just I on my keyboard or it's on the left-hand side in new tools panel. I just select the gray, and then I'm going to lock that layer. We've set that up and now we can start working on our botanical. I want to rename that one botanical. Now the next thing I wanna do is recolor all the line work all at once. I'm going to do the same as we did previously using our magic one tool, which is why on my keyboard. I'm just going to select one of the darker areas and you'll see it automatically select everything that's it has the same color. Using my I picker tool which is I on my keyboard. I'm going to select the darker gray color and deselect that. Then again, I want to recolor all the pinky bits, which is Y on my keyboard, and make sure that it is selecting that pink, you'll see at the moment, it isn't, it's picking up the dark gray, so that's incorrect, and I just want to deselect everything which is Command Shift A and zoom in to make sure that I am selecting the pinky area. For this instance, I'm going to stick to using the background color. We could, of course, have chosen white like we did previously, but in this instance I'm just going to use the background color for now. I on my keyboard to bring up the I dropper and I'm just going to select that color. Now all our artwork is recolored and we're ready for arranging. My best advice for bouquets is to think of a size contrast, think of variation in shape. Generally my thoughts for bouquet arranging is to choose one or two main focus flowers. Then we want supporting flowers around the main focus. In this instance, I'm going to use this guy as my main focus. I'm probably going to use this one as my secondary main focus, and then maybe will the rest of them are just going to be supporting elements to just frame the main flower that we see here. Let's start with that. We can always resize it together, and then I'm going to bring this little guy in. For me that looks too large compared to the big flower that I want to focus on. I'm just going to scale it down holding Shift key. I'm just dragging that in, and I also bring that to the front. Then the quickest way to do that is another shortcut which is Command Shift, and then the squared error to the right, square bracket should I say to the right. If you want to do it through the menus, you just come over to object, arrange, bring to front. I'm just going to be shifting them around as we go. I want to start with just a basic layout, and bold it from there. I would recommend getting into the habit of getting used to your keyboard shortcuts for moving things around. For example, I use a direct select tool a lot, which is this little guy over here, and that's A on your keyboard. I also use the selection tool, which is V on your keyboard, and then I do a lot of rotation, which is R on your keyboard. We're just going to move that its position and probably scale it up a bit, and definitely bring that to the back. You'll notice that this little bit sticking out at the bottom, we're going to fix that. But just for now, I'm just going to start arranging and we can touch up those things later. Let's move, maybe use this guy and rotating the dash and send him to the back. I quite like this leaf that I drew. I want him to be quite strong in the piece. I might leave the size quite large, and I'm bringing it to the front. I'm just with my eye, kind of using, I'm like filling in the gaps. It's almost like you building a puzzle, and you'll see there's a gap over there that we probably need to fill. This is feeling unbalanced this side obviously. It's all about balance, contrast in size and contrast in the type of elements that you use. Here we've got a big flower that takes up quite a lot of space in the arrangement, and then we've got like little bitty whimsical details at the top. That's like a nice contrast in the type of elements that you want to have balancing the piece out. Then I'll probably want to just elongate this area a dash, because this is quite a strong piece over here, so we need something else that's quite dominating as well. I'm going to use a combination of these two and probably something like that. But I want to enlarge them both. I'm holding down the Shift key just to select both at the same time. Again, shift key just to enlarge to make sure I'm increasing it proportionately, or on my keyboard to rotate them a dash. As you become used to the shortcuts and you get used to moving items around, you'll see your workflow increases speed wise because you're using only shortcuts instead of having to find them on the left inside each time. Then I'm just going to move it to the back, deselect that, zoom out to dash. That's taking shape. Again, you'll see we need something over here. I'm probably going to use this guy and definitely increases size. Now, I want to flip that, so I'm going to hit R on my keyboard, which brings up the mirror, the Reflect tool, and do something like that. This one needs to balance out that side. That's why I'm increasing it so much. I'm also aware of what's happening here at the bottom with its little branch bit. Then lastly, I'm going to send it to the back. I think that's starting to look quite good, and I probably want to have something coming out over here, I don't want something too strong so I might just duplicate this one. Let's see what that looks like. Then I just wanted to rotate it. But I'm happy with its position over here, if I hit "Arm" on a keyboard, what's can happen is brings the rotation point to the center of the drawing, which is going to throw everything off. I don't want that, so I want to move that. The quickest way to do that, I'm just going to move my cursor to the area that I wanted and just click once, and you'll see it is now going to be rotated from that area, which is pretty handy. Just move it up slightly. I think that's looking pretty good. Yeah. I think I'm going to stop there because I'm pretty happy with the balance. It's created like a shape, like a V-shape, which I'm happy with. Another trick that you can use, which is a good starting point if you stuck it in a way to begin, is think of your end result or you end shape that you want to achieve. In this instance, I wanted a hand held bouquet as if somebody was holding the bouquet in the hand. It would have created a V-shape, if you can imagine the hand being at the bottom. But if you wanted to create more of a circular shape, then I'll be adding, for example, I'll be adding more flowers over here and maybe another one over here. Think of your end result that you're going for because that's always a handy tape if you're stuck in, and you already began. We previously mentioned getting rid of this guy over here. The quickest way to do that is to go into isolation mode by double-clicking. I'm just going to use my pencil tool, which is N on my keyboard. I've selected the main shape. I'm just going to chit by redrawing that bottom a bit. Then, I'm going to leave us with the grungy bits because again, they add to the whole drawing. We have literally got rid of that. We're little bit sticking out. The alternative, what we could do, and what I might do in this instance just to keep it a little bit more realistic, because otherwise, this guy is going to be hanging in the middle of nowhere, is to bring this whole branch down. Again, the easiest way to do that, using your end on your keyboard to bring up your pencil, I'm just going to extend the actual stem all the way down. Following the rough line work of my original pencil drawing, I'm just going to be drawing tree buds lips, something like that, and finish it off. I think that's starting to look a bit more realistic in terms of the branch reaching the bottom. I think that's looking pretty good. I'm going go ahead and grip that and bring it down. I want to see what the shapes look like it white. I'm going to double-click to go into isolation mode, using the magic one again, select that color and come over to the white. I think I prefer that.I think that's looking pretty good. The last detail I want to add is that washy tape that we created in our drawings, come over to my flowers files and select the washy tape. I'm just going to zoom in and then paste on output, and now I want to full that entire area in the quickest way to do that is using the live paint bucket tool, which is K on your keyboard. I'm just going to fill the center. Then I'm going to expand, which is right at the top, but I'd like to make this one shape so that we don't have an inside shape and an outline. I'm going to come over to my pathfinder tool and hit "Unite" and that will combine the both shapes into one shape, which makes it easy for us to work with, because we need to recolor it quickly, which is this Ronnie color. The next thing I want to do is add a cute polka dot pattern to the washy tape. I'm just going to rotate it because I'd like to resize that, I'd like to stretch it out a dash. But the first thing I need to do is to reset the bounding box. The reason I need to do that, because you'll see it's the bounding boxes in a weird position. It's at the funny angle.If I have to extend it, you'll see it's actually a stretching the tape in a really odd way. We need to come over to object, transform, reset bounding box and Adobe has resets the handles for Lake View to manipulate. I'm just going to stretch it out now. I think that looks much better, and then rotate it again, probably something like that. Then come over to my swatches panel, I want to use one of the bolts in polka dot pattern that comes with the derby. From the flower menu, I'm just going to choose Open Swatch Library, come down to patterns, basic graphics, and then basic graphic dots. I want to use the second swatch that you see in the polka dots. I'm just going to drag that out onto [inaudible]. Then going to isolation mode because I want to change the little black dots, two white dots. Double-click using my magic one tool, which is on my keyboard, select them, come over to my swatches, choose white, go out of isolation mode and then just simply drag and drop that into my swatches panel. Then we want to copy this which is "Command C," paste exactly the same position and apply that polka dot pattern. Then you have a key through pattern that you've added to your washy tape. Other really key thing that you could do is actually use one of your illustrations as a decorative element on your tape. I'm going to get rid of that polka dot. I think I might use this guy, maybe something like that. We want to recolor with the same colors our background and bring it to the front. I just want to make a duplicate of that so that I can clip this. Even though it looks pretty cute, you'll see that the flowers are sticking out of the tape, so we need to clip that to the tape. First thing we want to do is make a copy of the tape, which is "Command C" and then paste in front again, which is "Command F." Now we need to ensure that it is a compound path because we want to use this shape as our clipping mask. Coming over to the pathfinder, I'm just going to use a flat menu and choose make compound shape, and expand it. Then I'm going to bring them to the front, using my shift key to select the leaves underneath, I'm going to come over to object and make. It's probably going to tell you that the path is extremely complex, which it is, but that's fine. We can go ahead and clip anyway. Then you have your drawing clip to the actual shape of the washy tape. That's it. I hope that has given you some ideas of how you can create a lovely bouquet and add a detail like the washy tape. In the next lesson, I want to show you how to use the ribbon with one or two of your drawings. I'll see you there.
13. Create a Quick "Thank You" Note: In this lesson, we are going to create many bouquet, and I'm going to be using the little string that we drew and one or two of my flowers, and then I'm just going to show you how I quickly put together a "thank you" tag with the flower bouquet that are created. The first thing we want to do is select some of our flowers that we want to use and I think I'm going to choose these two. Then obviously the little string that we do, and then copy it, which is Command C, create a new document command n. I am going to call it "thank you'' tag and I am going to make it 90 millimeters by 55. That's like a business card size, but you're welcome to create any size you like, and then hit okay, and paste that. Just zoom out so we can see what's going on and then I'm sure by now you know the drill, I'm going to just delete those colors that I do not want, and this I'm going to name botanical, create a new layer background, bringing it underneath, and then we're just going to bring in that color palette that we use previously. I'm just going to copy that, bring it over to my waking document, and I'm just going to lock that just to make sure that we don't change any of those colors. That would be command 2 on your keyboard. Now that we've got that lock you are make any changes, even if you use the magic 1 tool. Because I am going ahead and recolor everything, I am going to use the muted colors again. Using y on my keyboard, which is the magic 1, I'm just going to select the black area. When I drop it, you select the dark one, and for now I'm just going to leave the pink because I'm not sure what color I want to use. Bring this over to my art board, I am holding Shift as I've scaled down, and I'm just going to start arranging. I think I want to flip that. I'm going to hit on my keyboard to bring up the reflect tool, and I'm just going to rotate it probably, something like that, and I think I'm going to rotate that one because now we got two flowers fighting with each other. Maybe something like that and see what that looks like, and possibly increase the size of this one. Again, rotate it slightly, I think it is pretty good I'm just bring that down in size, maybe a dash mole. Now we want to place the little string around our grip and making sure it is to the front, which is object arrangement front, and that's obviously way too big. I'm just going to bring it down in size and maybe something like that. Now I need to fill the middle bits with wide, because obviously we haven't done that yet and you can see the botanical is coming through. Using the Live Paint tool, which is K on my keyboard, I'm just going to select my color which is white for the center, or the full arrow should I say, and then I'm just literally going to click wherever I want to add that full, and then we're gonna expand. You'll notice now that this string actually extends a little too far. It doesn't actually fit snugly around the branches, so I just want to squash that in a bit. Using my Warp tool, which is shift r on my keyboard. I'm just going to zoom out, you'll see that the brush size is way too large, and I also need to change some settings. I'm just going to hit Enter on my keyboard to bring up the Warp tool options, and make sure that the detail is deselected and simplifies deselected. The reason why I'm doing that, because if we have those on, every time we use the Warp tool is going to simplify the path and i want that one that, I wanted to retain all those little lovely grungy births and the irregularities of my sketch work. Then obviously the brush size I'm going to bring down to say five and five, I still want it to be a perfect circle. Then I'm just simply going to tease, just gently tease the shape into the position that I want. The brushes slightly too large still, so I'm holding down my option key and shift, and I'm just literally dragging down to bring the size down. Again, we're just teasing as we go. I think that looks right. Perfect. I am just going to be drawing a rectangle shape, but first I want to turn on my smart guides, and I'm doing that because I want to actually draw it perfectly to the edge of a page and the smart guides will help you to do that. Possibly bring that a dash higher and we want to recolor that, so coming over to our swatches, send that back, and what I'm going to do is actually bring that down to my background layer. From my layers panel, I'm just simply going to drag the selection that you see highlighted, I'm just going to drag that onto my background layer. Then I'm going to recolor the pink that you see. I think I'm going to use the same color that we used for the background. Again, using my magic one two, make sure that I have actually selected the pink and you'll see that I haven't in this instance, and we know that because if you look at your full area it's actually the darker color. Make sure that you've selected the correct color. Again, I drop a tool and I think that's starting to look quite lovely. What I want to do is group everything on this layer, on the botanical layers. I'm just simply going to use my layers panel to select everything on that layer, by hitting this area over here and it's select everything and then group, which is command G. Just bring that down slightly, I think that's looking pretty good. Now I want to add a text layer. Again, new layer text. Coming over to my Text tool, which is T on my keyboard, and probably wanted to say thank you. Bring up my character which is Command T on my keyboard, and again, I am going to choose Lulo. We are going to center it, which is Command Shift C, and make sure that it is correct color. Using my eye dropper tool, I'm just going to select that color, because now we want to align this to the center of the background shape. Holding down the Shift key, I am going to select the background. Letting go of my Shift key, I am going to select the background again, and what that's done is it's indicated to Adobe that I want to align it to this particular key object. Coming over to a line at the top, you'll see a little key has appeared, and now it's using this main object as our main align area, and I am just going to hit Center, and just bring this down slightly, and you made a quick little "Thank you" tag in no time at all. In the next lesson, I am going to show you how versatile your drawings can be and how you can actually re-purpose them in a different projects. I'll see you there.
14. Repurpose Your Drawings!: In this lesson, I wanted to quickly run through how you can re-purpose some of you illustrations in many different projects. The first example is going to be a quick business card. If I open the "Layers panel", you'll see that I have the background layer and a text layer. We have used a lovely hand-drawn font called Beluga, and I've used the Lulo for the photography. What we're going to do is we're going to use the bouquet that we originally created. I'm going to select that from a working document. At this stage, I don't need the washi tape because we just going to crop an area of the actual bouquet and come over to my working documents and paste that on the Botanical layer. Make sure I have that selected, which is "Command V". Then we're just going to bring that down in size. Again, holding down my shift key as I do that. I want to just resized it slightly and have it bleeding in from the right-hand side. Probably something like that. Add a dash more down. Then I just want to create a clipping mask using the background layer. Selecting the background and I'm using my "Layers Panel" to do that. You don't have to, you can just click on the actual shape. I'm going to copy that "Command C" and then paste in place, which is "Command F". That pastes in exactly the same position and then move it to the botanical layer using my layers panel. I'm just going to move that up and then select the bouquet as well while I have the shape selected. I'm holding down my shift key and selecting both. Then I'm going to create a clipping mask, which is "Command 7". Now you have a quick business card using your bouquet that you created in no time at all. The next quick design I want to take you through is an invitation or in this instances, save the date for a wedding. Again, I've used the muted color palette. I've just created a background which is a square shape, and then another square which meets flush at the bottom and it's center. I've just used the names again in the Lulo font. I've used a Serif font with that, that's in italics and if I'm not mistaken, that is called Cormorant but let me just double check, yes. Now what we're going to do is we're actually going to bring in some botanical and use them in the lighter color. This is the opposite of what we've been doing. Coming over to my flowers, I'm going select that one and this one, I'm going copy that. Then in the botanical layer, just paste that. I'm going to lock the other layers, just make sure that I don't accidentally do anything on those layers I don't want. In this instance, I'm going to get rid of the pinky shapes that we created because I just want the line work. Using my Magic Wand tool again, I'm selecting all of those shapes and deleting. Again, using my Magic Wand tool, I'm selecting the black line work and the Eyedropper tool just to select the light color. Now we're going to do some fiddling and arranging. I'm just rotating that. Probably something like that and then I want to move it upwards like this. We don't really have something along those lines. What I'm going to do is I'm going to split these two blobby areas that you see in this drawing. Make a copy of that holding down my "Option Key" as I move it to the side. Then what I want to do is I make another copy because I want to use for the one illustration I want this side on the other illustration I want that side. I'm going to copy it again. Again holding down the option key, going to isolation mode by double-clicking, just going to zoom in a bit. Then using the Lesser tool which is Q on my keyboard, I'm just going to select the area I don't want anymore. It's this side that I'm going to take out. I'm just going to draw using my lesser tool around the shapes that I don't want. Then I'm going to delete, zoom and again you'll see it's left a note over there which I want to get rid of. I'm just going to hit delete again on my keyboard and get rid of these little guys over here. Again delete. Now we just have a simple one longish branch that we're going to use. Coming out of Isolation mode by just double-clicking anywhere on your art board. I'm going to go into Isolation mode with this one. Now I want to get rid of this side. What I'm going to do is again, using Q on my keyboard to bring up the lesser tool. I'm going to select the same area because it's much easier and selecting the other area. Then coming over to my Select menu, I'm going to choose Inverse. Obviously what that's done is now selected everything I didn't select originally, and then I'm going to delete that and here we have a separate branch as simple as that. I'm just going to continue building this and rotate that possibly see what that looks like. Bring this guy down here and duplicate. I'm holding down my option key as I do that. Let's do that, see what happens and just enlarge that one. Again, rotate. I think this is too messy. What I want to do is take that guy away, rotate, bring him back. I think I'm happy with that. What I'm going to do now is duplicate this one because I want to create a darker version of it and actually place it on top of the square. We're going to copy that, which is command C and command F which is paste in front. Then I'm going to use my Eyedropper tool to select the background color. Now we just need to clip it to the shape. I'm going to unlock my background layer. Select that command C, command F because we're making a duplicate. I'm going to shift it up to the botanical layer and select my darker botanical and command 7 to clip. Now you'll see it's got both the whites, the lighter color, and the darker color. The last thing we want to do is just for neatness sake, we want to clip all the botanical to the background. I'm going to make a selection of the background command C, Command F. Again, bring it up to the botanical layer. Then I'm going to select everything on that layer just by clicking on this actual layer icon and then command 7. There we have a neat finished off invitation ready for you to print. I hope that showed you how versatile you can be with your illustrations and how you can use it in a whole bunch of different projects.
15. Class Project: I'd absolutely love to see what you create, so please do upload your class project. You can upload it via the projects and resources tab, and just click on create project. You're welcome to upload your lovely bouquet, or just individual flowers, if you like, or if you created a whole lot of other goodies with your flowers, we'd all love to see that too, and remember, learning is meant to be fun, so please do be kind to yourself if you are at the beginning stage of your journey. We all had to start somewhere, so be kind to yourself, and have fun. I hope you enjoyed the class, and I can't wait to see what you create. Thanks for watching.
Lisa Glanz, Illustrator & surface pattern designer
