Draw Dandelion Flowers in Procreate, From Real Life

1. Introduction: Welcome to this course where you'll get to create your unique dandelion composition from real life nature. Hi, I am an yesterday snack, an artist and illustrator of over a 100 children's picture books. I especially love adding flowers are pretty decor to my works of art. I feel that when it comes to art, there's nothing better than copying from real life stuff. It's the best way to find and play around with your own unique style. It's not copying someone else's work. Not even a photograph where the photographer chose the specific angle in which to take the photo, you get to choose what angle, what direction, where the lighting is coming from. It's learning to look and to pay attention to the details that speak to you most. And then putting it down on paper or in some art form in a way that you're most happy with. If you're a little concerned that you haven't had so much training or studies in the technical aspect of art or colors or techniques. Don't worry, because in this course, I'm here to show you that there's no right or wrong way to do it. It's just looking and creating what you see. You don't need any prior knowledge or training to be creative because it comes from within you. This is just a fun occasion to play around with some lines and colors, brushes and textures. I'll be using the iPad and Procreate for this course. But you can feel free to join me with any art medium that you choose, watercolor or markers, or crayons or color pencils can all work just fine as well. For the class project, I'm inviting you to come up with your own flower composition, whether it be a dandelion or any other flower that you choose, you get to put it together in a way that is most satisfying to you for what you want to use it for. I'm so looking forward to seeing all your beautiful flower compositions and works of art. 2. 01 Welcome: I'm so happy that you've decided to come and join me in this course on creating this lovely dandelion. As I mentioned before, I'll be using the iPad with procreate and an iPad pencil. But this course can work with any other art mediums as well. I've used the same techniques and tips with paints or color pencils or even markers. So don't limit yourself with just one form of art. It could even be fun to try out drawing the same flowers, but with different art materials. And then you find out which one you enjoyed this. For the next time, let yourself be inspired and have some fun, and maybe experiment and challenge yourself with something new, something different that you've never tried before, before. Some of the classes you will notice that I've included different slides with different strokes or shapes and lines that I've used to draw my dandelion flower. So feel free to use those if they can be of help, but don't limit yourself to just those. You can also just draw along with me, follow along as I copy my flower. But I encourage you, if you do have real life flowers to take that and play around with your angle, your lighting, your shapes. These slides are just in case it's of help to you, or if you'd like to refer back to them later on in drawing maybe some other flowers or maybe if you don't have a real life down the line to copy from. I've also included them as downloads in case you want to use them for another session. Or just as a reminder of some of the things that you've learned from this course and in case it's helpful, I've also included a color palette. Well, that's it for now. Let's get started with our flower art. 3. 02 Drawing the seed head and stem: I'm going to start with one of my flowers and I put it next to me so I can have an example of it. So I'm starting out by choosing my brush stroke. So I'm going to use a dry ink for now. And I'm going, oops. I wanted to get to drawing this one quickly before it all goes away. So I make sure I have my layer in place. I'm going to start with the circle in the middle. I think the thing about drawing we'll flowers is really looking for the details. Knowing what to look for, how to look. Not just seeing, but actually really looking, paying attention. I'm noticing that these are all little, tiny little seeds. They're all in the middle. This is where the seeds of the flower live. Then I'm going to change my color and find one that's fitting to my stem. I see I noticed that it gets lighter and then darker. So I'm going to start with the light part and I'm going to put a new layer. What I like about this brush is that you can push harder and it gets a little thicker. You also can notice that light is the light coming from. I'm going to add a little light on this side. Kind of helps it to stand out as well. And going back to this screen, I'm going to find a darker shade for the bottom part, which even kind of turns into a brownish red. So to just little strokes. So as you can see, I'm just working with strokes here because this is kind of like a pencil brush. And then you can always blend it together if you want. With your blending option. Then erase to make it still realistic. Be my stem. 4. 03 Baby leaves and seeds: Now we're going to pay attention to the little leaves. So back to my green. So you can find here in your history, to make it easier, I might go with a new layer again for the leaves. Each part of my smaller, each part of my flower is going to have be on a different layer. In case I want to change anything, alter anything later on. I notice that it's straight and then it kind of curls out Towards the end and thins out as well. Thins out and curls out a little bit. 5. 04 Drawing the seeds: And now I'm going to make the little seeds. So if I pay attention to one seed, I'm going to place it right here. So they're all coming from the center. Here's one, here's the part, the real seed. And then it thins out. Really thin. And then into all these little strokes coming out. Let me try that again. And let's zoom in so you can see what I'm doing. I'm just drawing little strokes coming out from the center. And that's basically it. So what I could do is duplicate this layer and then move it in place. I could move it and put, lays it all over my flower. Then I could move this one also in place to make it into a center. Or I could place these around the flower. These are the ones that have already fallen and flown away with the wind. And I'm going to make a new layer for all the ones still on the flower. That way I can really look and pay attention to the flower again, which I see that all the long strokes are coming out like this. Of course, there's some on all sides, which our flower that we're drawing is not 3D. So it's gonna be hard to capture that. On the ones in the front. There's also some in the bottom here. And then I'm going to just do my little I'm going to call them star shapes. I'm not sure what the real name for it is. You kind of do these all over the place. If I wanted to, I could have made that on a different layer and make a few. Let's see, I'm gonna make some smaller ones and bigger ones, some half ones. And then I can duplicate that layer to save me some time and move it around, place it somewhere else on my flower. Like so. I can always add to it, fill up the empty parts of my flower to put some in the center here as well. So there are different ways that you can draw or paint a dandelion, but this is just one way that I do it. And again, I'm going to duplicate it and move it to the side or anywhere actually on my flower. So when you zoom out, you're not going to see that many of the details. So that's why I'm not going to get too detailed and make these all over the place. Just a few more in the center. Maybe. There's something so satisfying about making these little shapes, even though I'm going quick, just makes me think of little stars. Sending out my little wishes. For me. Drawing, painting flowers is so relaxing and so meditative to think about the joy it brings me the thoughts that brings me. Alright, so it's looking nice, starting to take shape. 6. 05 Flying seeds: I'm going to make a few more flowing in the wind because that's what they do. I'm half ones. And then I'm going back to my dark color to add in the bottom part's little seeds. So this might look very complicated, but when you actually do it and you just copy your flower, turns out to be simple thing. 7. 06 Cotton ball: I'm gonna go back to my leaf layer and make a new layer there, and go back to my light color, maybe lighten it even a little bit more. Now I'm going to change my brush stroke, maybe two hearts. But it up. So you might not be able to see unless I take off the background color. And it's kind of giving, giving it that fluff. You could say. That fluffiness of a dandelion. This brush just kind of adds to it. If you wanted to, you can add a few puffs as well into the sky, into your background. Now it's looking a little bit more like dandelion. I might even add a bit more to the sides. We can still see the center little bit. Alright, let's change our background color so that we still have it. We have our dandelion. 8. 07 Highlights: I'm going to go back to my leaves and add a little highlight to sun is coming this way. If I wanted a little lighter, I just changed the opacity. That way. It stands out a little more. If I wanted to, I could also lighten this a bit and make it brighter. Wanted a little whiter. Depends if you want to keep it on white paper or not. So we have our dandelion. 9. 08 Stems and leaves: What I'm going to do is place these into a separate group. And that way I can have my other flower here on this side. Going to use the same green that I had. And first just do the general shape. Kind of notice where the leaves, I cut this one out, place it there. And here my flower. To move it down a little bit. Here are the leaves holding up the flower. Feeding the flower. Saying Come see, come see the flower. I love it when the flowers have their little set of leaves supporting them like that. And these are the babies, so there's not very many of them. I think it's beautiful though how they start like this and then they fill out older. So again, it's paying attention. I'm just copying here. Copy it and the style that you want. Segment a little bit. So as you can tell and nothing's really perfect. With my strokes, it's kind of rough, but I think that's got its own charm. Wildness to it. Wild flowers are not perfect. And maybe that's what I love about them. So if you pay attention to the leaves, they have their different little leaves within their main leaf. You could kind of make the thicker part for salon, which leave that stems from leaf stem. You could say. If you wanted to, you could also just cut it out and copy it. Like a Christmas tree, you could say, except it gets a little bit wider, the leaves a little bigger and wider as they go towards the top. Then after you do a few, you kind of get the general idea of the leaves. You can even make them yourself without copying, without looking like each one to be a little bit different. Actually, I noticed that it's easier to start from the bottom and work your way up. If you're not happy with certain parts, this part I'm not so happy with, so I'm going to move it a little bit this direction. It gets smaller and maybe there we have our leaves. 10. 09 Flower bud and detail: I'm going to pay attention to the top now. It's still a kind of a green color, a little bit lighter. So I'm going to make a new layer for that. So it depends what angle you want to see it. Look at it this way. Fighter again. And I'm just making little circles. You see how you translate it to, and it's got a little pink in it. Let's give it a little touch of pink on these top ones because they got a little bit of sun. Zoom in here. I'm just giving them a little C-shape. And again, for my leaves, I'm going to pay attention to the middle, again to the stem, then give them a little highlight. The stem is pretty thin, so I'm just going to give them a very light thin line. And the leaves, I noticed that the middle a little bit lighter as well. I'm going to give that be changed, my stroke too thin. So now you can sort of see it taking shape just by adding a little highlight. It's really how we see the light coming from sun or what direction we see it from. I'm not really going through any of the techniques of drawing a dandelion, because I think it's important that you find your own way, your own technique. And that's the wonderful thing about copying a flower from a real one. We're copying anything in nature, any object, even not copying it from a photograph or somebody else's painting. The trying it yourself not only builds your confidence, but it helps you to see, to pay attention, to notice the details. Because we all notice and see things differently. So there we have our dandelion leaves. 11. 10 Flower stem: The last part to do, I'm thinking a new layer is for our flower. So if I make my dandelion puff, not sure what it's called. I'll make that a little smaller and move it there. And move my leaf. They're closer to the side. Then we have some space for our flower. Again, I take a little time just to reflect on what I see, what I noticed. You can even turn it different sides of the flower. That way you know how it's shaped. It's made us even from the bottom. It might give you idea of how to actually create it. And also you can decide which angle you want. I'm making sure I'm on a new layer. And I follow the general shape with some rough strokes again. To start with. A little bit thicker on the top, I'm noticing. And it thins out to the bottom. And this time I'm going to add in some shading right away. Change my size and my opacity. Know if it's shading or just darker strokes underneath here. And towards one side of the stem, which is definitely the lighting. Because my light is coming from my window, which is on the right side of me. So already you can see it taking life just by adding a little bit of shadow. And while I'm at it, I can already do a little highlight too. So there we have the stem of our flower. If you notice, there's even a few little, little things sticking out on the sides. Maybe they were leaves or trying to be leaves. I'm trying to copy as much as I can. Sorry d bringing it some life. So there's our stem. 12. 11 Yellow Petals: I'm making a new layer for the flower. Now. You notice and look closely, it has some brown parts on the bottom. So I'm going to start with those. I have a brown here already. Sure, I'm on a different layer. And my brush maybe a little smaller so that I can like those little points. Okay, well first, now it'd be the time to decide angle of your flower. Let's see, I had turned it this way. There's a bug. It's what you get when you work with wild flowers. You can always expect a visitor or two on your table. So some are facing up, some are down, some are facing outward. I'm making a new layer now for the yellow. And I'm going to try to match the yellow color as much as possible. You can even take your flower. Notice that's a little almost fluorescent color. Then you try it out. I get again, these are the same size as these brown ones. Do. They get a little pointy on? Towards the end. I'm first just doing my general shape of the flower. So if I were to see it as a shape, I would make it a little oval. And then I work within that oval to fill it up with some of the petals are behind. Then you can decide if you want your brown colors. Brown pedals in front or in the back. And you can keep adding to it. I might even change a few colors because it's nice to have that variety. And if you look closely, there are different shades of orange, different shades of yellow. Which I might make a new layer four. And I'm going to make the orange ones behind. Kind of fill up those empty spaces. So it's not looking great yet. Don't worry. There's some flowers that only look good towards the end. And then I'm going to go back to the yellow and make it a lighter yellow and make it on top a bit lighter. Again, this is the lighting and also the petals. They have different colors. Not sure if there's one petal that has the same color as another one. I know it's like that with some things, a lot of things in nature. So that'll be interesting to research that. So how is it looking not so hot on it? From close up that I think from a distance it looks pretty good. Go back again to my yellow. Mix them on top again. Because that's the main color. And if I wanted to, I can always bring the brown onto the top. Although now it's not fitting so well. Let's try a new layer. Lets me go back to Brown. Because I sort of changed the shape of my flower where it's going. So there's sort of made me in the back and the bottom. I think that's close enough. Some of the stem goes a little bit higher and has even darker strokes. I think that's pretty good. It's a very simple version of it, but we have there, we have our dandelion flower in all its glory, in all its beautiful cycles of life. 13. 12 Shading the leaves: I'm going to give us leave just a little bit more detail, maybe more shading. So I'm going to make a new copy and make a clipping mask. That way when I work on it, it only works within that shape. That can be very practical when doing some shading. So I'm picking this color and just going a little bit darker. And I'm going to change my brush to hearts again because I like that it's so varied. I'm going to give a little bit darker color to at least half of the leaf. Some lights already just that helped it to stand out a little bit more. And now I'm going to go back to the light one and pick another color for some highlights. I'm going to do a new layer, start a new layer, again clipping mask. And this time I'm going to maybe overlay. Let's try overlay. It's going to kind of give it another, give it some extra brightness. I can change the opacity, bring it down a little bit. So you don't have to get that detail. You don't want to wait to do it. We have it there. Maybe I'll give a little extra highlight to these shapes here. There we go. 14. 13 Individual Flowers: I think I'm just going to merge all my layers for each flower to make it easier for myself. There's the leaf and the group. And I have my three flowers. So now that we have, are three parts of the flower. For this last part of the course, we're going to make something out of it. I'm going to start by choosing one of my leaves. I put my three fingers and I duplicate that part. I take my three fingers and I copied. And there it made a copy. And that way I can move this one around. I can flip it horizontally. I can change the size. I can even add it to my flower if I want to. You make it a little bit smaller. And I'm going to go again with this one and duplicate. There it is. And a new layer going to move it and flip it, changed the orientation of it. That way I have my flower with some leaves this time. I'm going to do, I want to make a copy of this one. And I'm going to join these together. Now. I have my flower with the leaves and my flower without the leaves. I'm going to duplicate this one as well. Just so I have a copy of it. This one too. I'm going to duplicate again, take off one. So I always have a copy of it. And now we can start to put our picture together. 15. 14 Flower composition: So I'm going to turn it around this way and also turn my flowers. That way I can have a vertical paper. This one again, I'm going to duplicate and also rotate rotate it manually. Swine I'm going to hide. So we have all the ones that I want to use. I might hide them so there's not too much going on. So I'm going to start with the base of my flower, the base of my flower design, which will be this one because it's the biggest. So I'm placing it in the center of my page a little bit towards the bottom. Now I'm going to add my dandelion flower without any leaves, since there's already so many leaves going on. So this part is loads of fun. It's really how you want to do it. What fits your style, your mood, and depending on what you want to use it for, oops, I meant to do horizontally. So I can make this one a little bit bigger. I don't like them to be totally symmetrical already since it's the same flower. I'm going to duplicate it again. This time, make it a little bit smaller and also a little shorter. So I'm just going to take my eraser, kind of curve my stem and bring it here. So it's already starting to look like a little flower design. I'm going to get another one, flip it horizontally, and this time I'm going to make a little beady one up here. And you can also decide where your picture do you want it? I want it underneath. Underneath this one. I place a dare. You can feel free to move it around. And I might duplicate that one. I like the little ones and transform it to the other side. So as you can see, you're kind of playing around almost making a pattern. And now I'm going to go back to this flower, which I left out before because we already have so many leaves, I'm going to just steal one of the leaves or coffee more like duplicate. So I'm just going to trim it a little bit. That way. I have my lease. It's a little baby leaf or I can make it another size. I can just have it be alone like that. Now, I'm going to maybe place this a little bit more towards the top and see what I wanna do with that one. Bit big. So I'm going to place it there. I want to see if it's even going to match or fit my flowers. It's got a little bit different shadings. Could fit in as well. Going to duplicate and move it and flip it, swell different direction. So you see you play round where you want it on your picture, on your flower design. Don't know if it fits here. I think I'm going to erase the extra little parts that don't really tie in with the flower. This part, we don't even see the seeds. They're too light. I'm going to change my brush to cards as well, just so we can follow the same pattern of the brush. And I'm going to trim it, make it a little bit smaller. So there's less puff. And that's the basic, just how I make my flower patterns. 16. 15 Background: So black was quite nice. You could have gray, you could have beige. I'm going to place all the layers that I'm not using that I'm just hiding that preserving for I ever want them by themselves placing them there. And on top of that, I'm going to maybe choose a beige color. Like that color. It looks nice with the yellow and I like the rustic look of it. And if you wanted to, what's really fun and what I enjoy making is a little bit of a darker color. I'm going to choose another brush, hearts I like. And I'm going to give my paper a little texture. That way. It kind of looks a little bit old. If you wanted to go in the back. The flower, back of the flower, you can go even a little darker. I also like to play around with different kinds of brushes and different colors on different parts of my paper. And afterwards you can also play around with how light or dark you want it. If you really wanted to, you could also add, I'm going to make one more layer and add some flicks. So I think it's a little touch that I'm going to add to my foot. You decide when it's enough for you. Make them a little smaller, make some green ones can also change the opacity. You decide. So those were some of the finishing touches and our background for this picture. 17. 16 Give it meaning: So for this part of the class, we're going to make something out of this picture. I like to use my paintings, my flower designs for something special and something meaningful. That speaks to me. First of all, I might merge these so I have some more space to work with. Together. I merged the ones that don't touch each other. So that way if I ever want to use them again, I can, I like to remind myself of what these flowers bring me. So for that, I'm going to either use a font so you can add some texts and type up whatever you wanted. You could write it yourself, which is what I'm going to do. So I'm going to pick the brown from my background and go even darker, almost black but sort of grayish. And I'm thinking of a word that flowers could mean for me. I love the yellow, the tyrannous of them. I am going to choose my dry ink brush and I'm going to write. But meaning this flower could bring me. I'm not a letter artists. But there's something about imperfect text. And perfect that it's not a font. I can move it wherever I want. I can make it bigger or smaller. And if I wanted to, I could even give it a little background. And you have your own little either journal prompt card, you can turn on the question on the other side about happiness. What makes you happy? What lights you up? Or you can use it like a little Oracle card or meditation card. Meditate, reflect on this word for you as you enjoy your beautiful picture. So I hope that this was a fun project and that you learned something from it and that you'll be able to go on and pick your own flowers, find your favorite flower, and maybe draw it painted or use it for something useful and meaningful.