Drawing a Stylised Carnation

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Chris and I really enjoy designing decorative patterns. The other thing that I love to do is to pass these skills onto other people. So when it comes to designing decorative patterns, where do you start? Let's start with something simple and easily doable. In this class, I'm going to show you how simple it is to draw a single flower that you can use to incorporate into your very own decorative pattern. You can do it all by working with this worksheet. Let's conquer overwhelmed with this pocket sized class by mastering one design element at a time. The first part of this class, we're going to complete this worksheet. To make it easy for you and to develop your hands, muscle memory, we are going to start by tracing the examples that I give you. Then I'll take you through the stages needed to master this flower on your own and adapt it to your very own style. Once you have drawn your own version of this flower, I'll guide you through the process of vectorizing your very own design, easily refining your lines, and making the flower pop with color. With some simple guides to keep everything in proportion, it's not a matter of getting it perfect, it's just a matter of getting it going. Fact, in this pocket sized class, we will be embracing imperfections and variety so that no two versions of this flower will be exactly the same. Grab a pencil or a pen, download and print the worksheet from this class. It's exciting. You can do this. Let's get started. 2. Complete the Ribbon: Welcome. I'm glad you decided to stay with this class. Before we go any further, please download and print out the worksheet. You can complete this worksheet with a pen or a pencil. I'm going to use a pen because it makes it easier for you to see what I'm doing. Normally, as in this example, I'd use a pencil. As we work through these exercises, I'll speed up the video in some places. Otherwise, it's going to be like watching paint dry. I'll slow it down when something needs explaining. We will start with this short straight length of line. The petals don't need to touch when drawn on a straight line. If they do touch, it's only at one point. Otherwise, they will end up looking distorted. For these exercises, you don't need to draw it perfectly. If you make a mistake, just carry on. The worksheet is just for practicing after all. Try and get a general feel for what you're doing when you start to go around the curves. That is, when the petals begin to make contact, if it's a bit wonky, that doesn't really matter at this stage, so just keep going. When things start getting a little bit too uniform, make an effort to draw the petals a little bit differently. So what we've got here is basically the inner or concave side. The outer curve is the convex side. The concave side is the base of our petals. You'll hear me talking about making things different all the way through these drawing exercises. What I mean by that is to vary the curves. Most of the time this will be accidental and sometimes deliberate. The aim is to draw graceful curves irrespective of whether they are accidental or deliberate. It's less important here because we will be refining our curves in affinity design. When we draw these veins, we want to see some curvature as well. When drawing them at a larger scale as I am here, it's easier to draw a graceful curve. And again, because we are going to vectorize our flower, we can be less precise with our veins in these exercises. By the way, if you are wondering about the pens I am using, it's this set of pens here. Hey, it's time to move on to tracing our first flower. See you on the other side. 3. Trace & Complete – Radial Petals: Repetitive tracing makes it easier to master curves without having to think too much about what you are doing. Take your time initially. If you speed up too soon, it can result in some sloppy work. The one thing you'll notice is the circle in the center of the flower is not perfectly round. This is deliberate because a perfect circle will look out of place. Variability is the name of the game for these exercises. If you are wondering whether you should work clockwise or anticlockwise, that's up to you. It's a case of whatever feels most comfortable. When we come to vectorizing these flowers in affinity designer, working in one direction will be more important. And this is because each pen line or stroke is assigned a layer, and layers overlap each other, but that's all for another lesson. Remember to keep the center vein a bit longer than the veins either side. Again, this is just a general rule, and you are free to break rules from time to time. See you in the next lesson. 4. Draw & Complete – Radial Petals: So this is exercise three, and when it comes to drawing the circle, remember to make the circle a little wonky. We are basically going to draw what we did in exercise too, but this time without tracing. You might find that you will be drawing a lot more carefully than when you were tracing. Because we are going to vectorize this, the lines and curves don't have to be perfect. They just need to be roughly in position. If you are going to do everything by hand, that is, you are not going to vectorize the flower and instead, you are going to hand paint the flower using acrylics or watercolors, that's absolutely fine. If that's the case, you will need to be a little more careful with your line work. This idea of balancing perfection with imperfection comes from a book I read called The curves of Life by Theodore Cook. In reference to a tree that you may consider beautiful, despite being far from mathematically perfect in its form, the beauty of the whole is not due to the observance by the tree of any mathematical formula, but to the subtle differences from exact rigidity, which are noticeable in the set of every bow in the fall of every leaf, in the whole growth of flower and fruit. Upshot is, well, oh, hey, look at the time. It's time to get on with the next lesson. 5. Trace & Complete – Carnation: Now we have finished exercise three. We are moving on to tracing the flower that you will eventually draw freehand without my help. We still have a little way to go before drawing it completely freehand, though. Let's start with tracing the sepals down to the receptacle, which is inside and the stem which is also called the peduncle. The sepals collectively are called the calix. The whirl of petals are collectively called the corolla. It is the petals that are colored to attract pollinators. In this case, insects Deep inside them is the receptacle where all of the parts of the flower connect and it is from where all the petals emerge. A flower is a plant's reproductive structure. A carnation contains both male and female reproductive organs. We won't be drawing those. When studying botany at university, we had to dissect and identify all of the parts of a range of different flowers. How did you go with the exercise? In the next exercise, we will use concentric ellipses to guide the drawing of this flower from start to finish. 6. Draw & Complete – Carnation: Now it's time to draw the complete flower, but relax. I've got you. Exercise five includes the concentric ellipses to guide the size and location of all the sepals, stem, and all of the petals. As with exercise three, you may have to draw more carefully. Again, it doesn't have to be perfect, but we don't want it to look overly weird, so please take your time. The more you draw these petals, the easier it gets. You may notice that I'm not rotating my paper around as I draw the petals. Feel free to rotate the page that you're working on if it makes it easier for you. The only reason I am not rotating the page is because it would be harder for you to follow what I'm doing. Another thing you may notice is that when I'm adding the veins to the petals, sometimes I'll only draw one or two veins, not three. If the petal you have drawn does not have enough room for three veins, just draw two or one. Let's take a small break. What I would like you to take note of is another general rule that I'm loosely applying. When drawing the sides of the petals, imagine the curvature of the petals originating from within the calix. For the outer petals, consider the origin to be more towards the center of the flower. This will add to the appearance of the petals bursting forth from the receptacle up through the tubular calix and out into the open air to soak up the sunlight and attract pollinators. This will give you a flower that has a more dynamic feel a sense of growth, and a feel that the flowers imperfections are a result of interacting with its environment. You know, for example, gravity, sunshine, along with wind and the rain, all of these things can affect the growth of a plant, including the flower. Onto the next exercise, perhaps the easiest one of all. 7. Removing the Training Wheels: Exercise six is the easiest exercise of all. All you have to do is trace these concentric ellipses, and again, the ellipses do not have to be perfect. For Exercises six and seven, use a pencil and draw a copy of the concentric ellipses. Draw them lightly and try to keep the distance between each ring the same. The reason for drawing lightly is because we don't want to see these elliptical shapes competing with our flower for attention. They are just there as a guide. For exercise eight, it's time to draw everything, starting with the concentric ellipses and following on with your very own carnation. This one is all you, not me. I'm holding my breath. I'm sure you will be fine now that the training wheels have been removed. It may be tempting when drawing carefully to press too hard, please keep in mind that when you are drawing, not to damage the nibs on your pens by pressing too hard. In the next lesson, it's time to leave the safety of the nest completely and fly free with your very own versions of this flower. 8. Make it Different: For exercise nine, it's time to start making this pattern your very own. That is to draw it slightly differently to how you have drawn it so far. You can have your stem grow, for example, from a different direction or add more curvature. But before you start drawing, I'd like to give you another tip. I could have covered this earlier, but didn't want to dive into too much detail too soon. Ellipses have two axes, drawing these axes first can help to set the angle of the ellipses and ultimately the flower. With these axes drawn, we can start drawing our concentric ellipses, start with the smaller one and work out from there. Again, keeping the distances between each ellipse perfectly uniform. It doesn't matter if one side of the ellipse is a little bit fatter than the other. Keep the curve of the stem looking strong. Do this, ensure the curvature of the stem does not undulate too much unless you intentionally want it to look weak or even dead. If you want the stem to look strong and deliberate, it should have one decisive curve. If there are too many undulations, the stem will look weak. Good luck. I hope you're finding all of this repetitive drawing cathartic and rewarding. I find that it all comes together and looks really cool when the petals have all of their veins added. The veins give the flower character. See you in the next hand drawn lesson. Oh 9. Make it Your Own: So now it's on to the very last hand drawn exercise, which is to repeat exercise nine and make it different again. What can we do this time to make it different? I'm going for a kink in the stem suggests the idea that somewhere in its growth, the stem has been subjected to an external force like wind and rain and has since recovered. As before, I'll add some concentric ellipses. To make it easier, I'll rotate the page to draw the sepals and receptacle and stem. Now we are on to drawing the flour as before. I'll speed it up. By now, you should be used to drawing the petals and drawing in the veins. I've got a note here just to remind you that it doesn't have to be perfect. Just get drawing and embrace your imperfections, as I've done here, you can add deliberate imperfections because sometimes petals can be distorted or stunted. So now we have done this, I am going to go ahead and actually vectorize this one. And the reason for that is I created this class back to front in order to develop the worksheet. So I've already vectorized this one, and I'm going to show you how to do it shortly. I will include both of these for you to download as a reference. And also, when it comes to completing the last two exercises or even this exercise, feel free to do something very different. Something that looks distorted owing to environmental factors like the weather. The important thing is to lightly draw the concentric ellipses first or even to establish the nice curvature of the stem. Just thinking about this curve and the ellipses may in your mind's eye give you some idea of what to do to make it a bit different. You may, for example, want to draw a bunch of carnations, or at least eventually to draw a bunch of carnations and even perhaps for a pattern, you may want to draw more than one flower. With exercises nine and ten, there is an opportunity to develop your very own version of this flower so that it is not a traced copy of what I have provided you. I'm not just saying this so that you don't trace and use what I've drawn for you. It's so you can proudly create your very own flowers for use in your very own pattern designs, and you can feel proud of the fact that you successfully re created a flower in the style that you can truly call your own. It's time to pick your best flower from Exercises eight, nine or ten. And the next lesson, we will start to vectorize one of these flowers. 10. Scanning: Now it's time to import your design into the computer. There's two ways we can do this. One is scanner in using a scanner. If you don't have one of those, you can take a photo with your phone or tablet as I'm doing here. Just make sure everything is lined up vertically and horizontally. So now we have the image, it's time to import it into affinity designer. What I'm going to do there is create a new document, and I could use a four because that's my default page layout, or I can change it into more of a web friendly format, which is what I'm using to record the video and I'm going for full HD ten ATP and putting it into landscape mode. Click Create and now we have a blank document and Affinity Designer too. I'm changing the color space to RGB because that is what we use for spoonflower and I'm going to select Place and then select the file I'm about to import, which is this one. Click open, and all that is left to do is simply to drag from the top right to the bottom left and you can see your scanned image starting to appear. I'll make this a little bit bigger so it's easier to trace. And now we are ready to create the thick version of this drawing. 11. Vector Drawing Tools: Okay, before we begin, I'd like to introduce you to the tools that we will be using because we will move along quite fast once we start drawing this flower. There are a lot of pedals to draw, so this short lesson is just to cover some of the basics. The main tool we are going to use today is the Pen tool. We will use the pen tool to create the lines and curves that we are going to draw. The second tool is the node tool. With the node tool, we can make adjustments to the lines and curves that we created with the pen tool. The third tool is the stroke width tool. With the stroke width tool, we can adjust the width of our lines at any point along the line. I'll start with the pen. I'll just pick this bit here. I'm going to start drawing way down here and bring it to a point. I'm dragging the mouse as I place each point. Then I'm going to hold down the option key. Holding down the option key allows me to shorten the handle thereby reducing the curvature between this node and the next one that I will be placing. I want to draw another curve just here, a very tiny one, and I'm dragging the mouse out again and again and again and again, placing nodes approximately where I want them and dragging out to establish some curvature. Now, the other thing I end up doing is adding a color. I could add black, but I'd prefer it to be white. I'm just going to go to my swatches and pick white. I'll leave the outline black because I will sort the colors out later. The next tool that I wanted to show you is the node tool. It's a handy tool for refining our curves. With the node tool selected, we can grab some of these handles and adjust our shape a little. We can also move points around for example, this does happen from time to time. If you have a sharp point, I'm just going to change this to a sharp point. A sharp point has no handles to grab. You can just drag the line a short distance and a handle is created. You can then drag the handle to refine the curve. We can sort that shape out and smooth it out. I'm going to select the Pen tool again and what I'm going to do is draw some leaf veins and drag it out because I want to have a curve. The other thing I do is press escape to let go of the curve that I've drawn. This is so I can start another curve. Sometimes you have to press escape twice, and I'll make that shorter and press escape again to release the selected line. This is something we're going to do repeatedly. I'll make that one just a little bit shorter and press the escape key to let go. I'm going to grab my node tool and I'm just going to reduce the curvature of this. Maybe make it a little wonky. Let's go. That will probably do. I'm just looking at these curves here. I might actually curve it the other way. Give it a bit more interest. Now we've done that, I'll press escape so we can have a look at that more cleanly. There will be another petal sitting over the top. The third tool is the stroke width tool. What I'm going to do is zoom in now so that you can get a bit of view, and I'm just going to pick this curve and click and drag there to widen it. And the same with that curve. That gives us a little bit more interest. At the end here, we can also adjust the width and if we want to make it to take it to a point, we just close it in it just depends on whether you want to see some roundness there or whether you want it to narrow further to a point. That in a nutshell is what we will be doing. We will be starting on the right side, but you can start on the left. The idea is to start with the outermost string of petals first and group each ring of petals before moving inwards to the next set. Then we will draw all of our petals veins. One more thing before we move on was when I was drawing some of the curves, some of the nodes were not quite going where I wanted them. Delete this line and draw it again. You can see that affinity designer is wanting the line to snap or to line up with the nodes I've already drawn. Sometimes it tries to line itself up with some grids and some guides. Even just some of the elements that you've drawn already. Sometimes this can be annoying, especially for a hand drawn, more free flowing design. To improve the situation, so you can place the nodes exactly where you want them, head up to the tool bar above and turn off snapping. Deselecting the little magna icon will make the node placement easier. I think we are ready to vectorize this flower. I look forward to joining you in the next lesson. 12. Drawing the Petals in Affinity Designer: So here we are. We're going to start drawing the petals, and as you can see, I am just dragging the pentle just to get those subtle curves. I'm also drawing above the next layer of petals. The reason why I'm starting with the outermost set of petals is because the inner petals overlap the outer petals. That's why I'm starting with the outermost layer first. So once I have finished drawing this outermost layer, and I think I've just got one more example popping up, there it is. Once I've finished drawing this outermost layer, it's time to just apply a color and I'm going to stick with white for now. I'm selecting all of these closed curves and selecting or applying white. That's just temporary. I'd need to give this layer a name, so I'm just going to call it outermost petals. It's time to hide this layer and do the same on the next layer down. And again, I won't draw every single petal here for you to see and watch because you'll just get bored, but I'm sure you get the idea. So let's skip forward. Shortly, I'll just finish this one and then we will skip forward to the last set of innermost petals. As you can see, I'm just going to give this set a name, group it, give it a name, and I'll just call these the outer petals. And as before, just apply a color, which is white, and there we go. Now it's time to get started on the next layer, but I'll skip that and go for the innermost petals. It's these three here. As you can see, I'm bringing them all down to a point inside the peduncle. I'll just call those the innermost petals. That is pretty much it short and sweet. See you in the next lesson. 13. Drawing the Calyx and Stem: By now you should be pretty adept at using the pen and node tools. In this small lesson, we will be combining the sepals or calix with the receptacle and stem or peduncle into one shape. We will roughly draw out the overall shape by placing points, then use the node tool to clean up all of the curves. You'll notice that I'm using the node tool to nudge the curves into place. You can use the nodes handles to fine tune the curves. H 14. Removing Gaps: There is a little tidying up to do to eliminate some gaps between the petals. Any gaps will look out of place. The petals are all grouped, so to select the petals that I want to modify means multiple clicks on the shape to select it and to automatically switch to the node tool. Once the node tool is activated, we can make our adjustments. 15. Drawing the Petals' Veins: This is perhaps the more disciplined exercise. Drawing the individual veins isn't so bad. It's more about keeping everything in order by grouping a petals veins with the petal and naming each group. We will be drawing a petals veins, grouping the veins and the leaf, and giving the group the same name. In this case, petal, and we will do this petal by petal. You may notice that every now and again, I'll use two or three lines per vein just to create a little more variation. The veins will tend to end up at the top of the layer stack, so it pays to only have the ring of petals that you're working on open so that you can drag the veins down to just above the relevant petal layer. If all of your veins are not at the top, the first vein will be just above the previous layer that was selected. To select multiple layers, I select the top layer in the list or the bottom that I want to group, then I'll select the bottom layer or the top. Then press Command G to group them. If you're on Windows, that will be Control G. The next stage is to name the group. Petal will do here. We don't need unique names for each petal. When we drew the petals in an ordered fashion, EG anticlockwise from the right to the left, we did this for a reason. It makes it easier to move the veins just above the relevant petal so we can group the veins with the relevant petal. Repeat the exercise on all of the petals in all of the groups. When we are done, you'll see all the petals and vein layers as they should be. 16. Styling the Petals' Veins: The Stroke Width tool is new to Affinity Designer version two, and it's a pretty cool tool that provides direct manipulation of the strokes width at any point along the length of the stroke. Select the stroke width tool. Select the relevant curve to do this, multiple, click your way to the line on the layer stack. Select and hold the mouse on a point of that line and drag the mouse perpendicular to the line. The line will either grow in width at that point or reduce in width. Just change direction to reverse the change in width that is what you want to see. For me, the tips of these veins are a little fat, so I'm going to reduce the width at the tips. 17. Adding Colour: Now it's time to add some color to the line drawing which we've just created. So here we have petals and they are closed curves and veins which are open curves. So what I'm going to do is select the same object. So from select menu, select objects, select closed curves. And that will select all of the petals because all of the petals are closed curves. So I'm just opening this up. You can see that it's just the petals that are selected, nothing else. Actually, that's not entirely true as we are about to find out. What I'm going to do with those petals selected is just drag the eyedropper down and pick up a pink color from this reference picture. Then I'll click the eyedropper again and that applies to the color or that applies the color to the petals, all except for this one, and I suspect this curve is still an open curve. I don't know why it wasn't selected, so let's just select it and apply the same color. Problem solved. Now it's time to think about tackling the calix. I want this to be a different color. I'm not going to go for a deep blue like before. Instead, I'll just choose a green and a temporary green. I may change it a little bit further down the track. So what's next? I'm double clicking all the way down to a petal. What I want to do here is select the same fill color. By selecting the same fill color, I'm not selecting the calix. Now I can adjust the outline of all of the petals. I'm going for this red and I'm sampling this flower which I've created before for a similar red. And now I've applied it to the stroke that goes all the way around the petals and we're zooming in to have a look. There it is. This looking pretty good. Again, I might adjust that color later. What's next? Next, we think are going to start looking at well, actually, before we start looking at the veins, let's just thicken up the stroke on the petals and maybe just make a few color adjustments as well. I think I might make it a little bit darker. Yeah, that's looking pretty good. So I'm not going for an exact copy of the colors that I've used before. And now what we're doing is selecting one of these curves. This is one of the veins, and if you recall, I called this an open curve. So to select all of the veins in one go, we go Select Object open curves. Every single vein in every petal has now been selected. And with that, we can apply the red. Now, the red didn't match up with what I had before because it obviously changed it. So what I'm doing is resampling it and adding it back in and then just playing around with it a little bit more. Again, I'm not after perfection. I always like a little bit of variation in the colors that I apply. Back to the calix, we need to get rid of that black outline. I've turned that off, back to the color, and what I want is something maybe a little bit darker and a little more saturated. It's looking about right. I don't think there's really much more to do. We've pretty much finished drawing and coloring this flower now, and now it's time to create a pattern out of it. Now that's not part of this class because this is a pocket sized class. We're just focusing on one element. But even with one element, you can create your own pattern or tackle something more complex like the example that you see there. Again, I'm just playing around with the color of the calixcpe or something darker. I hope you enjoyed this class and hope to see you in the next one. 18. Your Project: Hi, my name is Chris and I really hope you enjoyed this class. If you have completed the project, and I really hope you do, I'd love to see the end result. So if you've gone as far as creating a vector version of this flower and coloring it in, please post in the project area of this class. And, I mean, if you only go as far as the hand drawing lessons, again, I'd still love to see them. So post those in the projects area as well. Oh, one other thing, I would love it if you could tell me what you would like to see in the next class. So these are pocket size classes. This is the first class in this series, and all I'm going to do with these classes is focus on drawing one thing, not an entire pattern, but really just an element. Or if it is an entire pattern, it's going to be a relatively simple one. So some of the geometric patterns I post will be relatively simple, and you'll be able to either hand draw these or draw them on the computer. So again, I hope you enjoyed this class and I look forward to seeing you in the next, maybe I won't actually see you, but you'll see me. Thanks. Bye.