Drawing Flowers in Procreate: Find Your Floral Illustration Style

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Iva Mickles, and I am a professional illustrator, and designer based in Europe. Flowers and floral designs are one of my favorite things to draw, because they can make everything look quite fresh, and positive. In this class, I would like to share with you the process I usually follow when I draw flowers, and create flora illustrations. You can start creating your own unique floral style or experiment with adding flowers to your art. Floral illustrations have quite an extensive application, and you can use them on prints, fabrics, various products, and merchandise. You can also create floral-inspired actual collection, or use floral elements as decorations in your artworks, and connect them together. This class is full of fun exercises, so you can explore different ways to create beautiful floral designs, and you will also learn what I believe is important when developing your own floral style. Together we will explore flower, and leaf shapes, and experiment with different ideas how to draw flowers. We will discuss how to get to engage in compositions, how to quickly test colors, how to build your flower illustrations from sketch, to choosing brushes, adjusting details, simplifying, and applying textures on the final artworks. I will be also showing you how you can use references, and what to consider when you draw flowers from your imagination. I will be drawing digitally in Procreate, but feel free to use any other digital drawing software. You can follow the concepts about floral design, composition, and style development using any medium you like, such as colored pencils, markers, and acrylics. Whether you are a beginner who wants to learn how to draw flowers, and develop your own floral style, or you are little bit more experienced illustrator who want to learn new tips, and tricks, this class is for you. Let's create those beautiful floral designs, and see you in the class. 2. Class & Project Overview: During this class, I would like you to create the floral compositions. Maybe with one flower or more flowers which inspire you the most. You can practice alongside me as I will be showing you my process that bicep. You can also create your own floral artworks following the Exercises. Here is what we are going to look at during this course. In the first part, I will show you my process when I create flower and leaf shapes from the memory and imagination. I will break down the techniques into categories so it's easier for you to remember and practice. I will be sketching digitally using pencil like digital brash, but you can also use traditional pen, pencil and paper for this part, if you prefer. In the second part of the course, I will show you my process from sketch to final details. I will share with you about the brushes and coloring themes as well. We will look into how you can work with colors so you can make them look more coherent and vibrant in your illustrations. I will also show you how you can go about finding inspiration and references online and also in the real-world, what and why you should look at. You can find unique and interesting ideas, styles, and compositions which would feed your illustration style. These will help you build your own collection of references and collection of illustrations with wonderful flowers included in them. As I mentioned previously, I will be drawing digitally using basic brushes in procreate, but you can also experiment with using acrylics, markers or colored pencils in this part about the concept and schedule development. Here is the overview of the class license. First, as I mentioned, we will look at flowers simplification and practicing the basic shapes of the flowers as well as leaves. Then we will look at the composition planning, color testing and in the demonstration part, we will start with line art, then we will move on to shadows, highlights, and at the end we will add leaves, details and textures. After the demonstration, where I show you how I draw the flowers in my style, we will talk more about inspiration and practice, how you can go about finding your own unique style in growing flowers. Here I also want to give you a few ideas where you can use your flower illustrations. Floral illustrations has quite extensive application, you could create a set of illustration and connect them together with flowers. They are more coherent in composition and style. Here is an example I want to show you my marine animals with floral decorations, which kind of fits into this category. You can also combine your favorite coat with florals. You can use it as a wallpaper for a phone or you can create flowers. We do use as a pattern and fabrics and heavy printed on a t-shirt as well. As you can see on this T-shirt, the floral illustrations are great for merchandise. You can upload them to licensing websites like Red List, society segues and red bubble, or apply them as a decoration on stationary like calendars and notepads. As you can see, you can utilize the flowers you will create during this project in this class, in many different ways. Before you jump into the class project, here are the few things I would like you to consider. The illustration would represent you and your preferences the best. First, what are your favorite colors? Do you prefer colors that are bold and bright? Or do you prefer more subtle tones like pastels and earthy color palettes? Then as a first thought, where would the imaging these artwork to be? Do you imagine it on a t-shirt or as a wallpaper on your phone, or perhaps a decorative element on the party invite. Next thing to consider is, what type of flower or flowers do you like? Would you like to go for classic roses? Soft peonies or wild flowers from the field, and of course, you can combine different flowers and you have so many options here. Next, I would like you to consider and think about look and feel before you start creating. Would you like to create a tropical feel and sense of fun holidays? Because, tropical leaves would work great in such a case. They are quite popular on products during the summer season, as you might have noticed in the shops as well. Or maybe you want to create a delicate and sophisticated look with a limited color palette and delicate lines, which is very often go to style on wedding invitations? Or would you like to have calming, natural feel on a poster in a bohemian looking home?. In such a case, you could go for earthy sap to color tones. You can write down all your preferences and thinking about the context. Before starting any illustration, I usually write down all of these preferences and also I think about the context. The most important in my opinion is to capture the right mood with your RFPs and not to have perfection in every detail. Really tried to have fun and experiment with different florals, different compositions and different ideas. I think like this, you will be able to be more spontaneous and you will be able to express yourself with the use of flowers in your art in the future. For the exercises and the demonstration from sketches to finish illustration, I will be using a Peony composition. If you want to practice alongside me, you can download it in the resource section. Please remember that you can access the resources only when you are on the computer, not in the app. Now, when you know a little bit more about the project, let us start creating. 3. Flowers Simplification: When it comes to flowers and plants, there is a lot of variety in the nature, and it can look very complicated. However, we want to simplify what we see in real life because it helps with improving your skills in floral illustration and developing your style. Practicing with simple shapes is a great warm up before we start designing our full illustration so you are able to simply easier what you see in your references from real life. The more you draw and practice with different shapes of flowers, the more it will come naturally to you to create new flower shapes or flower compositions from your imagination. In this lesson, I would like to show you different techniques that I use when I want to create floral illustrations with variety in shapes. After I go through these techniques, I would like you to notice these shapes when you look at the flowers in real life or further references. So let's start the practice or warm-up with basic shapes. When you are creating from memory or imagination, I believe it's good to start very simple at the beginning and then you can add details later. When designing, you can combine different techniques that I will mention. Most of the time I started with using shapes for the petals as you can see here on the top left corner. Drop a teardrop, half circle, almond shapes and circles and their combinations. When I don't want the flowers to be too geometric or too stylized, I use imperfections with purpose. The more imperfections you add, the more realistic look you can get because the real world is not perfect. In these examples, we will work with more stylized shapes without many imperfections. You can play with imperfections later on. So here starting with the teardrop shapes and as you can see, a radial arrangement connecting the petals in the middle. The next thing would be to practice adding the middle part of the flower in the form of small circles. This part of the flowers, as you might know, is for development of the seeds upon fertilization. So we can already imagine these seeds and simplify them into small circles. Next thing I consider when drawing flowers from imagination and practicing these shapes is angle under which we would see the flower. Is it front view? Is it three-quarter view? Or is it side view? For this type of flower, for the three-quarter view, I would make one of the petals almost into oval shape due to for shortening in the perspective and the few of the other petals next to it are shorter than the other ones on the right. This way we can imagine that the flower is under angle and we could sketch the side view with few petals fully visible on one side and on the other side covered with the other petals. So we would see only their top part, which now looks like a half circle added to the teardrop shapes. Next technique and practice I usually use is a cemetery of the flowers and its petals. When designing imaginary flowers, try to also consider creating variety using spacing among the petals. Some flowers and flower heads you draw can be with no spacing among the petals and others can be with bigger spacing among the petals. And this can also happen within one type of flower, as you can see in this example. Next thing I would like you to practice is an overlap of the petals. For example, some species of daisies don't have so much overlap. But with daisy galore, you have an overlap of petals from top to bottom and if you overlap these petals from side to side, like in my sketch example, you can get the tropical look of the tropical looking glamelia, which can be found, for example, in the Caribbean or Central America. If you want to also practice coloring and sketching these examples as a warm up, I uploaded an image for you in the resource section. To color in Procreate, you can set the layer with line art to multiply and color on the layer under it. As you already know, there are many more flower types in the nature with different interesting shapes. I just want to mention here a few more techniques which you can consider when sketching. In the previous examples, we looked at some of the petals which has round edges but you can also stylize the flowers with flat edges and point the edges of the petals. Next thing I would like you to consider when practicing and sketching the petals you would add, which would create, again, a very different look. For example, you can create only a few petals and add solid chunky look or a big amount of petals with more delicate and field flower look and feel. You can also experiment with the amount of petals and their overlapping. As I already mentioned, you can overlap the petals from the top or use the overlap in the circles, like with roses or peonies where you would draw half circles or ovals, overlapping as basic shapes from inside out. You can also create variety in your floral illustrations and your compositions. If you also add newly, freshly grown flower heads with not that many petals open yet, and also flowers which are fully bloomed and have opened flower heads with lots of petals. This contrast of opened and closed flower heads can create very nice variety in your flower illustrations. Another thing I like to sketch in my flower illustrations to add little bit more realism is bended or twisted petals. Imagine a straight petal, fully open, and bended petal on the edge and you can see how different look you would create right away. You can imagine these petals fully bloomed and open, or when they are just bended, they are about to be open. You can also consider the bending and twisting the petals in different directions to create more visual interest in your floral illustration. For example, bending petals upwards, like here in this example. These techniques and design choices, of course, are not definite and you have many more other options which you can get inspired by many different other shapes of flowers, and especially the unique shapes of tropical flowers and plants. But these would be the summary of aspects whether I think about first, when I want to create and sketch new flower shapes. In the next lesson, I will tell you more about the design choices I make when I design leaves. See you there. 4. Leaves Simplification: In the past lesson, we looked at drawing different flower shapes and now let's think about drawing leaves. As well as with flower shapes, the more different shapes of leaves you draw and practice, the more naturally the ideas will come to you and you will not have to look at many references and photos in the future, as I mentioned before. To explain the techniques better, I will show you some of my references from the central European forest. Here I want to show you what I think about when adding leaves to my floral compositions. Using different leaves, you can create a variety in your artworks. First, I'm thinking about basic shapes which come to my mind first, like almond shape for example, with pointed edges, as you can see in my first example. Then I'm considering whether the leaf will be more wide with round top edge or will it be more narrow with pointed edges? Or I can combine wide and round at the bottom part and pointed edge at the top, as you can see here. In the next example, I'm thinking if I can make the edge more unusual and geometric maybe, for more stylized look. I sometimes try to add these unusual shapes to my floral illustrations. In my opinion, it doesn't always have to be super realistic, but it should be somewhat believable. You can start with a realistic look of the plant and then exaggerate the shape to your liking later on. In this next example, I'm adding this zigzag edge. One example with sharper edges and one with more rounded edges. You can see this type of a leaf in strawberries or roses, for example. Next, I'm thinking of longer stems with more leaves. You can, for example, start placing the leaf symmetrically on the stem, growing out of the exact spot. As an alternative, you can also place the leaves on the stem in a asymmetrical way. Notice that in this example, I created all the leaves in the same size. Now as a next version, you can make the leaves on the bottom of the stem larger than on the top. You can imagine then the leaves on the top are very new and therefore very small. Then you can also play with the shape of the leaves on the stem from narrow, long leaves, which you can notice in different shapes on palms, for example, then you can also try more round and wide leaves, like in the field forest lands. As a last idea, here you can experiment with different amounts of leaves on the stem. For example, just a few on very short stems, or even maybe split stems with different leaves. Like this, you can create different looks, for example, when you add a lot of details like lots of leaves and maybe split stem with other details, you can make your illustration more delicate, whereas adding big leaves and maybe just one stem, you can make your illustration more lush. So try to experiment not only with the flower shapes and flower types, but also with different types of leaves which you can include in your compositions. Now, I will just copy everything that I have on this page to quickly show you what I'm considering when adding basic color to the leaves in this exploration and practice stage. First, I think that I can have dark base or lighter base color for the leaf. If the flower is in light color tone, I usually go for a darker leaf color with lighter details on it. If I am drawing more leaves on one stem, I have more options. Either I can start coloring them all in one basic classic color tone like light green or dark green, or I can create more unusual color combination, creating one leaf darker and one leaf lighter and switching from one side to another and create even more color variety in the illustration like this. Other option is that you can also create like a gradient look, making bottom leaves darker and top leaves lighter on these one stem. Same as in nature, usually the smaller leaves on the top of the stem are very fresh and therefore in lighter color tones. You can also try more blue tones or even more unexpected colors, like purple or pink tones, depending how realistic or stylize you would like your illustration to be. As you can see, there are a lot of options to consider. Also when you are adding leaves to your floral illustrations, not only when you are adding flowers, you can think about the classic shapes of the leaves, you can think about tones and unusual colors, delicate or stylish, sophisticated shapes. You can also consider shapes which look more like a field plants or tropical look like a palm leaf shapes and other tropical leaves. In the next lesson, we will talk about ideas for compositions and what we can create out of flowers and different floral arrangements. 5. Flower Compositions: As I mentioned in this lesson, I will show you how I plan my compositions, how I come up with new ideas and what I consider when sketching those ideas for the flower illustrations. And after we looked at different ideas for practice warm-up in shapes. Now it's time to think about how we can combine them. First, I usually considered the purpose of my illustration, is it for a product, poster or a pattern? As I already mentioned, you should think about this for your project. In the following examples, I will show you how I use floral illustrations on a poster as a decoration for the invitation and a few other ideas. You can download these examples in the resource section if you'd like to practice alongside me. So let's start with the first example, floral illustration for a poster. First, I would consider the overall solid of my composition. Who they want to use, rectangle, triangle, circle, and so on. In this case, I would use a circle because I would like the composition to be round and the flowers in the middle of the poster. Next, I will decide how many main elements I would like to have in this composition. So here I would go for four main elements. And of course, these main elements are for flowers. Then I would consider how they can overlap to create a sense of realism in space. Like if you are looking at the fresh flower bouquet, I usually imaging birthday or wedding bouquets because usually they have very nice combination of flowers. As you can see, the flower number one is above on top overlapping flower number two. The next thing I would consider is variety in the flower bouquet. Like in the real life, not everything is the same. So I would consider creating different flower types and the angle under which we are looking at them. As we talked about in the previous practice sketch examples. So for example, we can draw one flower from the front view and one from the side view. And of course we are making design choices here. So we don't need to have all the directions as it can be in the real life. So here we can set along the front view, side view, and three-quarter view. As we practice in the warm-up flower exercises in the previous lessons. We can add different directions in the form of leaves. Because as I said, in the real life, you can imagine that the flowers are tied together with a ribbon or a string in the middle, and they would face different directions outwards from the middle of the composition. So now let's add these variety of directions going from the middle of the bouquet outwards with some greenery. When we are happy with the placement of our four main flower elements. And you can think about these greenery as decoration. You would see in the flurries when they are making your bouquets. As I mentioned, the greenery would also point outwards from the middle of the composition. Imagine it is also tied with a ribbon in the middle of the bouquet. So as you can see, when we have more elements pointing in different directions in the composition, it creates interesting flow in the illustration. After adding these elements, I also consider that they can have different distances from the middle of the illustration to have variety and more organic field to the overall composition. So as you can see here, I would move one of the flowers so they don't have the same placement along one horizontal line. To summarize this example, we have four main flower element, one in front view, one inside view, and one in three-quarter view. Then we have some greenery to make the bouquet fresh with variety marked in green. And then we also have some small flowers to support our composition to add even more variety. This one is marked in light pink in this sketch example as you can see. But there are more composition ideas with which I would like to show you here. And as a next composition idea, I would like you to imagine that you are creating a flower illustration for an invitation. Imagine you are creating your own party invitation for the next event you are planning. Maybe something like this with flowers at the bottom of the paper of the invitation. If we create something like this, I would like to have more or less symmetrical look. So I can use a ruler or use a drawing guide, which you can find in the Canvas settings in procreate. Similar to the first example, I would first draw circles for the main flower elements and their placement. I would create two big flower shapes and then may be few smaller flowers. And this time the greenery would be in the form of two longer stems on both sides with a bunch of smaller leaves on each stem. As we practice in the previous lessons about leaves. And now let's put the sketch on the side so I can show you another idea for the composition. In this next idea is about floral illustration for a grocery list or a to-do list, which you can sell in your online store or make it for yourself and print it out and use it whenever needed. So here when you think about florals, you can add them into the top corner or the bottom corner of the page of the conversation because you want to keep some space for the lines where you can write later on. Same as in previous examples, think about the main floral elements in this composition, the greenery and the supporting small elements. When you decide to draw flowers on the top corner of the design, you can imagine a hanging type of flower, for example, something like wisteria flowers. These type of flowers can work nicely; also, if you would decide to design a wallpaper or a mural and you would want to have those flowers to hang from the top of the corner of the wall. The next example for the composition can be a name tag or a sign for the door. Here you can write your name or it can be a card you would create for your friend, for a wedding, or it can be sign for a laundry room or something like that. So here we would create a square or a rectangle dedicated to the text and then we would create flowers. So they would look like they're coming from behind this rectangle with the text. To make the flowers and the leaves feel integrated into this composition with the text rectangle, you can make few leaves to overlap on top of the rectangle. If you are drawing this digitally like me, you would create one layer for the background with the flowers. Then you would create one layer above this layer for the text and the rectangle. Then you would create another layer on top of all of these for the leaves overlapping these rectangle with text. You can also consider compositions for posters with the longer stems or even three branches. You can draw a branch and add few flowers, few leaves and supporting leaves in different parts of the branch. In the nature, as you might have already noticed, the small flowers are usually at the end of the branch and you can also rarely see big leaves on the top and at the end of the branches. Therefore, I'm placing the big leaves at the bottom of the branch, big flowers somewhat in the middle or at the bottom, and smallest flowers on the end of the branches. Okay, and let's look at more ideas for the compositions with florals. As I mentioned before, you can combine flowers with different elements, objects and characters. Here I would like to show you a few examples of that. The sketches I'm creating now, I would like to consider for a sticker sheets, pins, or a stand-alone posters. When you are thinking and considering what objects you would like to combine with flowers in your flower compositions, try to think what hobbies and interests you have. Maybe it's writing letters or taking pictures. So here you can create like an envelope that you are sending love with flowers to someone or you are taking pictures and it's blooming with ideas. The next idea for the flower composition, I would like to show you combining flowers with characters. In this class I'm not going into details how to draw characters because we would need another stand-alone class for that. But at least I wanted to show you an example for an inspiration for more floral compositions because it's always fun to add characters. If you would definitely want to try to draw characters combined with flowers and you don't know where to start just yet, you can take a photo reference and then you can add big bunch of flowers to different parts of the illustration. For example, if you are not comfortable drawing hands, you can cover the hands with the flower bunch as well, or the character can be holding flowers in the hands. You can also replace the head of the character with the flower bunch. I'm sure you have seen this idea floating on the Internet. Especially if you want to draw characters. Easiest way is actually to take a picture of yourself maybe holding flowers and then go on from that photo reference, place it in the digital file and trace the outlines of the silhouette. As a last example, you can take a picture of your dog or a friend's dog or a cat. You can trace the outline of the pup and then add big flower bouquet composition behind him or her. And this is a great idea for artwork if you want to give a present to your friend or make a portrait like this for your own fluffy friend and put it on your own wall in the house. Usually, to balance composition like this, I would add most of the big flowers on the bottom part of the composition. So the face of the animal, or the dog in this case, would have a space to stand out in this composition. To balance it out and still have some visual interest of the flowers, I would add some smaller flowers and the leaves behind his ears in the top part of the composition. All of these is depending on the type of the dog, and it's silhouette. Maybe the dog would have big ears standing up, filling up the composition, or maybe a long droopy ears. So you would try out different placing for the flowers in this composition. So, hope you have a lot of ideas for the flower compositions. As I mentioned, you can download these in Resource section if you want to try out some of the compositions I showed you here. I will talk more about the inspiration for compositions in one of the later lessons, which is all about developing your own art style and creating a collection of your artworks. Now let's move on to the next lesson, where I will show you how I colored this, my ideas and why I make certain choices. See you there. 6. Testing Colors: When I'm happy with my initial composition, I quickly test the colors which I would like to use. If you want to learn even more how I choose my colors and color palette, you can check out my color palette class. I also have a masterclass about color and light. If you want to take the use of color to the next level. When I was creating this class, I asked my community in Instagram stories which colors they would prefer for these flower illustration. If you want to try this out as well. It doesn't matter if you have 100 followers or 100,000 followers. You can always ask because your fans usually like to be part of your process. I love talking with everyone through social media and I'm always happy to see their suggestions because it's very helpful in the process. If you are not doing this yet, you should definitely try it. To test your colors in a sketch, you can make the layer black and white by reducing the saturation and adjustments. Then I would suggest to copy this layer in case you would need the colored version later on. Create a layer under the line art and test colors you have saved in your color palettes. Or you can also try out something new. As you can see, I already have a bunch of color palettes saved here. These are mainly the ones I like to use most often. In this case, I was thinking that these ideas can become a set of posters or a sticker sheet. Therefore, I wanted to have them in one color palette so they would fit together nicely. The key to color consistency among these illustrations so they would look like a set. I'm using similar colored tones for the flowers and leaves. I alter the colors with supporting elements with a camera body and the envelope color. You can also make at least one flower in each illustration the same color like this, orangy tone and alter the colors of few supporting elements. For example, you can put one pink flower in the envelope and maybe yellow flower in the camera illustration. As you can see, I don't have the brown color in the camera illustration and it is gray instead. I could have made the camera body also this nice brown color tone as we used for the character to keep this side more coherent. I like this small variety in colors to keep the beige color across all three illustrations. I have it as a background for the character main color, for the envelope and details on the camera illustration. If you would want more consistency in the set of illustration and have more similar colors, you can add the gray from the camera, also to the envelope, and also to the character illustration. Let's take this note book idea as an example for more color exploration. We can consider how the final product would look like and test out how the flowers would look on a different colored paper, for example. As you would usually have different color options for printing like recycled paper or off-white paper and other options. You can also add another color layer as a background to your illustration. If your printing shop has only white paper, has only one choice. Then you would like to have different backgrounds options in your notebook idea for example. Here I'm starting the color addition with a peach color on the flower elements. I see that with this color, I really like darker leaves. In the other option, as you can see, I'm trying out lighter color on the leaves. I'm also trying out yellow on the very light white background on the right as you can see. Here I do a few changes because I like to test colors before committing to the final illustration because it saves me time in the long run, and I don't have to change much when I finish up the illustration. When testing the colors on the sketches, you might also get new ideas how to improve the compositions and other ideas. As you can see, all of these colors sketches are very rough and quick. In like these, you can quickly test out different color palettes and explore your options. Usually I like to create new colors and color palettes using color wheel, but you can also copy or color test and adjust the hue with the adjustments in hue and saturation. You can also play with the color balance adjustments and curves to achieve your desired results in colors and values. We can find these settings on the top left corner in the adjustment menu. If you are using the adjustment tools here, in order to change only flowers in your concepts, not the notepad background paper color, you have to have the flowers on the separate layer or create the selection before you apply all the adjustments. In the next lesson we will start with demonstration, the demo illustration, and I will show you how I usually start my full flower illustrations. See you there. 7. Demo: Sketch & Thumbnail: As I mentioned in the lesson about flower compositions, always try to think about the context first. For our project, I would like to make flower illustration into a poster therefore, I need a bigger resolution and bigger size canvas in procreate. And in our course, you can draw in other digital drawing software, but there will be different settings then I will be showing you here. So here I am in procreate as you already know. And I want to share the print on site. So I would research what are the common sizes of frames in the US and in Europe, for example, so people can frame their artworks after the purchase. And here I will create few types of Canvas resolutions. So the art print would fit into different frames. And then I would offer more image files to download with the same artwork for the purchase on Etsy. So in this case, I would like to have the flowers in the middle of the print. So for a start, it doesn't matter right now if my canvas would be two to three ratio or three to four ratio, because i will be always able to adjust the flowers and move them around to be in the middle of the print. Now for a start, I just want to have a bigger canvas. So I would be able to have high resolution version for all the prints I want to offer. So here I would create 39 by 50 centimeters, which you can see here on the right. It is saved as file number three as one of the big options what I have here. And you can of course, experiment and create and save your most used sizes as predefined canvases to. The canvas sizes and the layers it will have. It depends on the size of the memory and the RAM on your iPad. When my canvas is created, I can check it in Canvas information, how many layers I can have with the size and type of the iPad RAM. So here I can see with the size of a canvas that I have 15 layers available for this artwork. If you would be creating your artwork on a computer and maybe Photoshop, for example, you don't have to worry that much about the amount of layers because the computer can handle more layers and bigger files. So if you want really big artworks, may be creating it on the computer would be a better choice for you. But as you can see, procreate can handle quite big files. So I am okay with this artwork size here in procreate and 15 layers. So let's do this. To start with the sketching process, I create a layer for a sketch and I choose a neutral color. And this is just because I like the sketch with these type of colors. I will hide or delete these layer in the later stages. So it doesn't matter what color you will use for sketching. And regarding the brush for sketching, I usually use predefined ink brush or pencil brush in procreate. As in the composition practice, I start with three big flower shapes with an overlap. Then I add a few smaller flowers and leaves pointing outward from the middle of the composition. When you have the basic sketch plan, you can start considering the angle under which you are looking at the flowers. Will they be all in the frontal view or would you use three-quarter view or a side view and the other consideration is, would the flower heads be fully open with more symmetrically placed petals, or half open and some petals would be maybe asymmetrical. So there are more things to consider as you remember from our practice warm-up lesson. Then as a next step, I would quickly test the colors on the thumbnail to check if I like these colors combined together. Usually I try not to zoom in too much, not to be caught up in the details, but for the sake of this class, let me show you how I would do it on the bigger scale so you can see better. For this colored tests so you can choose any brush you like. But as you can see here, I'm using the big wet acrylic brush, so I am able to cover bigger parts of the illustration quickly [MUSIC]. As I mentioned before, I already planned my colors and I have saved them into my color palette. So, at this stage, I'm just testing how they fit together in the composition and which elements will be in which color. And I'm not changing the colors that much. I plan to use three different colors for the flowers, in the similar warm tone color family. As you can see, I chose these Terracotta, burnt orange color, warm yellow and warm pink, which is not very saturated. These colors are inspired by a desert color tones and Bohemian interior designs. Create a little bit of contrast to the warm color tones of the flowers. I am choosing greens for the leaves. Of course, these can seem as a quite obvious choice, because the leaves are green in the nature as well. But if you like, you can play with the colors of the leaves too and make more unexpected choices, like blue or more yellowy tones. And I'm using quite this saturated tones for the greens, because I want the flowers to be more saturated element in the illustration and to be more vibrant than the leaves to stand out. And here you can also see that I'm using three different green hues for the color leaves to create more variety there. I'm thinking maybe darker green color for the bigger leaves closer to the flowers to help them stand out more. The lighter green for the smaller leaves further away from the main flowers. And I'm also considering how all of these would look against the dark green background as you already know from the class thumbnail. So here I need to make sure that these greens are not the same. So they would still be visible on the background that they are not standing out too much.[MUSIC] I put these colored thumbnail in the corner and then I can start on the illustration for real.[MUSIC] 8. Demo: Line Art: I keep my sketch on a separate layer, set the layer to multiply, and I create a layer for colors right under it. I will create a random color shape, where I want to draw my line art. This is just because I want the line art, in the lighter color, so I need this background color tone, so I would be able to see it. Other option you have is of course, to have a dark background from the start, but they wanted to test it also with a lighter background. Therefore, I need these random color shape under my line art. You can also create a line art in the darker color. In this case, you don't need to put these color of the flower first, under the line art. If I start right away with the lighter line art, I don't need to change the color of the line art later on. I can just delete part of the base color shape, which I will not need maybe later on. So again here you can experiment, if you like to start with the lighter line art and this base color blob under the line art or, do you want to start with a dark background and a line art, or the third option would be to create dark outlines as a line art. But here, I will just do all lighter line art. As you can see here, I'm using a simple line brush, without any texture and the full opacity to have an inky drawing look, you can find these brush in the calligraphy predefined brushes in Procreate. You can also explore different brushes online, if you would want to try something new. I set the streamline of the brush to maximum to help me with a steady hand and smoother lines. I will keep the same brush deep size for the line art, on the whole illustration, you can check the size of the branch on the left side, on the Procreate and underneath, you also have the opacity. So you can always make sure that the brush deep size is the same, and also you have full opacity. If you want, you can vary the thickness of the line within one flower, but I don't recommend thinner line for the smaller flowers, and thicker line for the outline for the big flowers because I believe they would look like they don't belong together in one illustration. In this case, we are trying to create a coherent look for the whole illustration with variety in shapes, not in the line art. But this is just my preference in the selected art style. So you can, of course, experiment with different line arts and thicknesses, if you want to achieve different look. But in this case, I am keeping the same thickness of the line art across the whole illustration. As you already know, from the trailer for this class demonstration, I will draw peony. In my process, I usually start drawing petals from outside in. But this is totally up to you as well. You can start from the middle of the flower, if you would like, whether you start from the middle or from the outside, you should notice in the observation of the flower that the peony has overlapping solved shapes of the pedals. So you can use the organic shapes and lines in your line art. Also remember that the smaller petals are in the middle of the flower head and the bigger petals are on the outer ring of the flower. You can also combine more open petals with more bandied closed petals. Then I will add some details in the middle in the form of circles or a small teardrops with few lines for the stems. I would organize my layers and flowers into three separate layer groups. The main reason is that I would like to have the flowers finalized on a separate layer, so I'm able to move them around in the composition, if I would want to in the future. So I'm creating one group for each flower. In each of these groups, I plan to have a layer for a line art, layer for a basic color, layer for shadows, and layer for highlight. For now, we will start with the line art layer, and base color layer in each group. As you can see, I prepared some references for the flowers for our illustration. Over time with practice, you will not need many reference images and photographs to draw things and objects you like to draw very often. So you don't need to use references for this illustration, if you don't want to. However, for this class, I found these pretty peony vetting bouquets, where we can see the flowers and have a nice reference for the front view of the flower. We can also see the flower from the side, and you can also observe the shapes of the petals. So when you are starting to draw a flower, try to observe the silhouette of the flowers without exactly tracing the petals. Observe how they overlap each other. Are they wobbly or are they more straight? Do they have bends? Are they round? Are they bended? So try to observe all the silhouettes of each petal. When you learn to observe the shapes more in details, you will be able to stylize them easier. So in our demonstration, for the first two flower heads, the orange one and the yellow one, I will use the observation and for the third pink flower, I will show you how you can use tracing method of the photo if the observation is still too difficult at this stage for you. I believe that you shouldn't feel bad about using references. Definitely not. It is nice to know to draw everything from the head and imagination, but it doesn't always work as we want. As I said, it all comes with practice. For some people is 10,000 hours and they learn in the average pace. Some people learn very fast and for some people it takes much longer. So learn at your own pace and don't feel bad using references and practice with repetition. I can draw flowers now without using any reference, but it's just because I like to draw them and draw them often for fun. For object and characters, I don't draw very often. I definitely use references. The only thing you should remember, is not to copy just one reference. For practice is okay, but for your final art, try to combine different references as your inspiration. So as I mentioned, for these third flower, I will show you how you can combine tracing the reference, any observation and filling in the shapes from your imagination. My reference image is from n data elements, but you can take your own reference images from outside or a find free or paid photography. I will place the photo in the third pink flower layer group and I reduce the opacity of this photo reference layer. I start tracing the silhouette of few petals on the line art layer above the photograph, not on the same layer. I try not to trace all the petals because this flower would have too many details compared to the other two flowers we already have. When you traced few of the petals, may be the ones with the most interesting shapes. You can place your photo reference on the side of the canvas and filling the remaining shape with the random petals. As we did on the two other flowers, you can use these nice wobbly line to create bigger petals closer to the edge of the flower and smaller petals closer to the middle of the flower. Now, you can look again at the whole composition and try to evaluate if you like the silhouettes. Here, I can decide that the flower can have better silhouette and it's nice to break the silhouette with few petals, which are more open. So I can delete some parts from the base color and create few of the more open petals for more interesting silhouette. Then you can also adjust your line art if it doesn't fit the new pedals on the edges. Now, when we are done with the bigger shape flowers, we just need to add the smaller flowers. Same as on the other flowers, we will create the separate group. But because we are limited with layers, and these flowers are not sitting on top of each other and they are not overlapping in the design, we can have them in the same layer group. The small flowers are more in the side view angle to create variety in the composition. Because the main big flowers are in the frontal view and three-quarter view. As we did in the lesson, about flower drawing techniques, shapes, and the warm-up sketches, the side view flower can have one bigger petal, which we see the most of. Then we create two smaller petals on the side of these bigger petal. The bigger petal is covering these two petals next to it. Then we would add small half circles, which represent the rest of the petals, which are more hidden in the side view. As you can see, in this case, the silhouette of the petals are not very geometric as in our warm-up exercises, but they are still around. We can just create them by these small wobbly shapes, not half circles, as in those previous exercises. Also, when I'm drawing smaller flowers in the composition, I would create less petals so it doesn't become too complex. Overall, I try to keep the complexity of the flowers on the same level in the illustration. So smaller flowers have less petals and bigger flowers will have more bigger petals. At this stage, I think I'm happy with the line art and the base color, so I can move on to adding shadows in the next lesson to create dimension in my illustration. So see you there. 9. Demo: Leaves: Usually before I add the shadows and highlights to the flowers, I like to have the basic greenery and leaves in the composition. In this flower style, I don't add line art or outline to the leaves, but I still like to add some details to them later on. Here I'm not using outlines because I want to have a little bit of different styling compared to the flowers which have an outline. However, instead of a texture brush, I prefer to use a very simple brush. The same brush as I used for the flower outlines. As you already know this from the sketch, I decided to create three different colors of the leaves to bring more color variety to the illustration. And to create some structure or a hierarchy here, I'm thinking about three different types of leaves, and distribute the color of the leaves accordingly to the type of the leaf. As you can see from the wedding floral bunch for the reference we have here on the left, the're usually more types of leaves and greenery in the bouquets. You can notice bigger leaves, midsize leaves, and small decorative leaves. And I'm going for the same look here. I will use three different types of greenery in three different colors. I'm using the darkest green for the bigger leaves and for these type of leaves, you can think of round eucalyptus shape leaves, or you can use the similar round shape but with pointy end, like you can usually see in a lemon leaf. The lemon leaf has big leaves that looks like the shape of a lemon. And it's great for adding fullness to floral designs. For the midsize leaves in a lighter green, we can consider something like myrtle. Myrtle is one of the most popular types of greenery in floral arrangements because of the variety of ways that it can be used and it has nice long stems, which are usually aligned with nice small leaves. And the third group of greenery which I will have in this floral illustration composition, will be just as a supporting element. So I will keep it as simple as possible. Something like a stem with simplified shapes as green or yellow with dots. And I'm keeping these three types of leaves on a separate layers. And these greenery element is inspired by gyp flowers. These flowers are often used as a filler flowers in bouquets. They are also known as a baby breath. And as I mentioned they're often added in bouquets, but also in the floral crowns. They are very cute, small flowers. They look lovely when grouped in bunches. But as I mentioned, I'm using this as a supporting elements. So they are very simplified and you can just see them as the small dots in these yellowy green color. I simplify this third group and I'm planning not to add any highlights or shadows to this third leaf group, even though in real life they would be there. With so many bright and beautiful flowers available, it can be very easy to overlook the types of greenery and leaves and filler flowers that can accompany them in the bouquets. But the filler flowers, leaves and greenery can be the component which would compliment their floral compositions. They add interesting details and shapes. So try to play around with different types of plants and greenery and find out what kind do you like the most in your compositions. The leaves and greenery usually don't receive the attention they can deserve when we are creating the floral compositions and floral bouquets. So instead of using only flowers in your compositions, try to experiment and accessorize with greenery and leaves. And in the next lesson we will continue with our floral compositions by adding more realism to it. So see you there. 10. Demo: Shadows: Okay, and now let's add shadows, to our illustration, to create more realistic feel, engaging details in dimension, to our basic flight colors, and line art on our flowers. First, I will group the last flowers we created in the previous lesson so, we have all the layers organized, and everything is easier to find. I will start with the shadows, on the orange flower,and I have the group saved as flower one, as you can see. Here, I create a new layer, above the base color layer, and below the layer with the line art, to be able to easily draw under the line art, without influencing this layer, and of course, let's give a name to this layer so, we can find it easier,and I will call this layer shadows. I set this layer to multiply, and I will use the same color, as I used for a base of the flower. You can select it from their color palette, or you can just pick it from the illustration. It is the mid tone burnt orange, or we can call it the Terracotta orange,and because we set the shadow layer to Multiply blend mode, and use the base color of the flower to draw the shadows on this layer. The color on this layer looks darker, but not too different,and It is in a similar hue tone, and it fits nicely with the base color of the flower. If it is too dark, for your liking, you can easily reduce the opacity of this shadow layer, with the multiply opacity mode,and of course, this is just my preference to create shadows, by using multiply blending mode in this style. So, you don't have to create shadows in this way. If you don't like the color, and you want to test something else for your shadows. You can test out different colors for your shadows on the separate layers. So, if you don't like them, you can always delete them, or adjust them, and you will do the same if you are creating illustrations traditionally. You would just test out different colors on the side, you would test out the base colors, and the shadows, and the highlights if they fit together before applying them to the final illustration. The advantage of a digital illustration is that you can just test them right here, on the flower, and delete the layer if you don't like it. Here you can see the comparison of the two colors of the shadow types. One with a multiply blending mode,and the same color, and then the other version where I just adjusted the color, and kept the layer on the normal blending mode. In this case, I like the color of the shadow on this multiply layer. So, I will continue with that, and paint the shadows on this layer with the multiply mode. [MUSIC] 11. Demo: Highlights: Highlight, and that type of highlights or shadows depends on the style you choose. In this case, I'm adding the highlights because I really like the level of realism, which it brings to my flora illustrations. So I will show you how I usually apply the highlights though my flower art, and the style I choose for these. I want to create the highlights on the separate layer because I want to use the layer blending modes again and because I am limited with the number of layers, as I mentioned before, due to the big size of the canvas and illustration, I need to merge some layers down, and I still want to be able to access previous versions of the illustration. So I will create a copy of my Canvas in procreate, as you may already know, if you close the illustration, you are not able to go back in history of steps you did before. If you're working in photoshop, you can usually have a lot of layers, so you don't have to worry about this. Then it depends on the type of the computer you have, but usually it's okay with a lot of layers. Each digital drawing software has its advantages and disadvantages. So when thinking about merging layers, you can think creatively. Which layers you want to merge, based on if they have overlapping elements or not, and how you want to use them. Or maybe if you also want to move them in the future. In this case, I want to be able to move the flower separately, the orange flower by itself, pink flower by itself and so on. When the illustration is finished. If I don't need to move the flower separately, to reduce the amount of layers. I could have merged the line layers from different flower groups together and paint under one line art. But then I wouldn't be able to move the flower separately later unless I use the Selection tool. So I will go to each flower group and I will merge shadow layers with the base color layers. Then I create a separate layer for highlights in each flower group. With the same color as our base color of each of the flowers we are drawing the highlights on, for example, the orange on top of the orange flower and so on. Try different blending modes on top. As we saw when we were creating shadows, you can see that each blending mode creates a different effect, and therefore different color. I like the screen blending mode in this case the most, but I feel like that the highlight is too strong. Or in other words, too contrasting with the rest of the flower and of course, depending on your preference, you can decide if you like this or you would like to reduce the opacity of the layer, like I do here. You can also test out different colors for highlights on a separate layer. Again, like we did in the shadows, not using the blending modes. You can just use the color wheel to choose the color. For me using blending modes for highlights and shadows. Help me to keep consistency in contrast and use and helps me to stay organized and have smooth process in the whole illustration, and that's why I prefer these technique in the floral illustrations, as I explained in my other classes, it's good to try different processes, define their favorite. When I'm all set with setting up the layers and choosing the right blending mode. I can start creating highlights on all the petals. You can imagine our light source or a sun to light from the top. So I start adding these lighter tones on top of the petals. At the same time, I'm adding a few lines starting from the highlight and following the shape of the petals as we did with the shadows. I'm usually zooming in and zooming out to make sure that the whole composition is balanced with an amount of shadows and highlights and the contrast in the whole illustration. Sometimes if you stay in the zoomed in view for too long, you can get caught up with too many details or maybe creating too much contrast, which isn't maybe important for an overall image. So always remember to zoom in and zoom out to check the illustration in a 100 percent size. As I mentioned before, and you have probably noticed by now, I have created separate layers for each of their flower groups and it's highlights. When I'm done with all the highlights, I go back to library and duplicate my artwork canvas. Again. In case I would want to go back to the previous versions. Then I go to my new as file and merge layers of my base colors of the flowers with its highlights. So I will have some more free layers for the leaves and its details in the next step, and in the next lesson we will create details for the leaves. See you there. 12. Demo: Leaves and Details: In this style, I like to add single details through the leaves instead of a texture brush compared to the flowers, I like to bring little bit of variety in styling. Therefore, I usually use an outline for the flowers, but no outline for the leaves. To bring everything together, I add similar simplified lines to the leaves as the details as on the flowers, so everything would look more coherent. When I'm happy with all the shapes of the leaves and will create two new layers for the details on top of the leaves. As I said, I will not be adding more details to the third type of the light, almost yellowish green detail. Therefore, I need only two extra layers, not three for the greenery layer group. I will have one extra layer for the details on top of the dark leaves and one extra layer for the details on the meat tone leaves. I place these layers above the layers with the base color of those leaves. I create a clipping mask on the layer to be able to easily add details only to those areas where I have the base color and not to draw outside of this area. This is very handy if you also want to add texture and you are using texture brushes in some areas. Here I said the layer to multiply to try out the details in a darker tone. I just try one line and here I can see right away that I want less contrast. Here I would reduce the opacity of the layer. Then I would try a few different styles of the line details to see what feeds the best in my illustration and I settle on splitting the leave in half with one line and creating a few diagonal lines on one side of the leaf. You can always test few different styles and see what do you prefer the best in your illustration. It is all up to you and as before, I'm always zooming in and zooming out to consider the look and feel of the whole illustration. I also added a few dots to the leaves to create little bit of visual connection with the lightest leave group and it's dots. We would have these dots or circles as a repeating element in different areas of the illustration to keep the consistency in the composition. You can see my inspiration for these dots on the leaves on these reference picture which I took in the forest. After looking at the whole illustration, again, I decided that I would prefer the light lines on a detail layer, so I changed the layer to the screen mode. This is just a personal preference, So you can see if you like the details in darker tone or in lighter tone. In this case, I want the flowers to stand out more than the leaves, so I decided for the lighter, less visible details on the leaves. If you would want the leaves to be more dominant, maybe you can keep the darker lines so there will be more contrast and therefore they will stand out a little bit more in the illustration. When I'm happy with the details on the big leaves, I move on to the meat green tones, smaller leaves. Here, I want different lines as details, then on the big dark green ones to have more variety. The idea for this styling came from this reference. As you can see on some of these leaves, you can see the shadows, but you don't really see the detail lines on the leaves because the shadows are more visible. I tried different styling on these leaves too. I end up with the line split in the middle of the leave with few other strokes. Like in this example, you can see this very often in the nature, there line in the middle of the leaf and then there are a few other lines coming from the middle to the outside of the leaf. You can see in the process I rotate the canvas to be able to draw the lines easier. When I'm done with all the line details, I will add one more layer above the small flowers to create the leaf covering the growing flower heads to create more realism and I need this extra layer for the leaf, because all the other leaves are under the flower layers. Without this extra leaf on top of the growing flower. The flower looks like it's growing out of stem and to me it just looks like it's glued on top of a stick. That again, this is just my preference. If you like how it looks now you can keep it like it is, but I would like to add little bit more realism to it. For example, if I would be drawing very small simplified flowers, I wouldn't add these extra leaf, but because the illustration, it's supposed to be on top of a poster and it's in the bigger scale. I want to add these extra leaf to create more realistic look. To mentor the shapes of these top leaf with the stem which we drew before. I'm deleting part of the layer under the flower, so the stem would look more thin and more delicate. I also like this look a little bit more now. Then I'm ending few lighter lines to the leaf covering the flower to keep the consistency across the illustration. As a next step, I will change the background to the dark green for my flowers to stand out. As you know, I already plan these color from the beginning. To add more texture, I'm adding one gray layer. I apply the noise filter, reducing the saturation of this layer. I said the layer to overlay and reduce the opacity. This step adds a little bit of vintage poster look and feel for the whole illustration. We are almost done at this point, but looking again at the illustration as a whole, I would like to add a little bit more visual interest to the middle of the flowers to make this area more noticeable. You can either make the area behind the small buds darker or add a different color to those small dots or you can make them much lighter than the surrounding area to make them stand out, I decided to go for a color and I'm adjusting these middle parts to be more delicate because I like these look little bit more after using it on the middle part of the pink flower as you can see. Now I am happy with the illustration and we can call these done. In the next lesson, I will talk more about developing unique floral style inspirations and practice. See you there. 13. Floral Style: In this lesson, I would like to talk about different aspects of how you can start practicing or continue your journey of developing your own style when drawing and simplifying the flowers you see in real life. Sometimes finding a style can be a lifelong journey and your style preferences can change over time as well. So don't feel like you have to rush it if you're not there yet. Thinking about your art as a career, it is nice to show a coherent portfolio to your potential clients and licensing partners, so they know what they can expect from you. It is also good to have a coherent look and feel for your Instagram profile and your online shop. Overall for the online presence, so your followers can recognize your style when they see it somewhere online. So here I will share with you some of my observations that I made over the years and also my inspiration for the florals and the style of the flowers I like to draw. Before I talk about the list of what to consider when developing and thinking about the style, I would like to point out that some parts of this list or the considerations you can use on the other illustrations not only flowers. For example, animals, characters, and other objects. So here is the checklist I usually use when thinking about the style I use on the flowers. This is not in order of importance. So one of the aspect for your art style would be amount of details. Are you someone who loves to draw and look at a lot of details in the illustrations? Or do you very much like simple shapes and minimalism? I also consider the amount of details depending on the project I'm working on. If the illustration is going to be a sticker or logo, I reduce the details to a minimum. If the illustration should be on a big scale, I can always have more details. Of course, this is up to you. Imagine you are asked to do a floral mirror. Would it have a lot of details or a big simplified shapes or maybe just a line art without colors. What is the look which will definitely define you? If you want to practice and try this imaginary exercise, you can take a picture of a wall, maybe outside or of your room, and you can start imagining your floral art on this wall. You don't have to paint on the wall because it's quite a commitment. So you can take this picture and bring it to Procreate or Photoshop and try to draw on top of it and then you can imagine how it would look in the real life. I'm also planning to paint on the wall in my office space and I would definitely take a picture first and try it out in Photoshop or Procreate to see how it would look in a real life before committing to real paints. Next point in the style development, I would say is shading and textures. This can be one of the things you always do in your signature style, which you can be recognized for. Do you like a lot of textures in your art, or do you prefer smooth and flat surfaces in the illustrations? These can be reflected on how you create shadows and highlights in your art too. On this leaf, example, you can see I used the same base green color, but I tried out different shadings and texture styles. You can try simple lines as we did in our flora illustration before, or you can use the extra brushes to create shadows and have a completely different look and style. Of course, if you go for textures and texture brushes, they are countless amounts of different textures and different texture brushes. You can have gradients with a subtle texture, oil brush textures, grain textures and I can go on like this forever, so just experiment and you will find something that you like the most from all the choices. The next thing to consider in the style development is the stylization and shape. For example, do you prefer shapes which are more fluid and organic or do you prefer more edgy and geometric shapes? I usually prefer very fluid and organic shapes and that's why you can see it in most of my illustration. I don't have that many sharp edges there. The next consideration for your style is color. I mentioned this to you at the beginning a little bit. As you can see on the flowers, I like to use warm color tones. Some artists are also recognized by the use of color and color palette. Maybe they use only certain colors or they always go for a bold color choices or they always go for a very pastel colors. So this can be one of your design choices which contributes to your art style. As you know, I talked more about the colors in my color palette class. Another aspect or a consideration is composition. Maybe you could be recognized for a busy composition which would fill the entire space of the art work or you are someone who loves to create few elements on the page with a lot of negative space. Another point for developing the art style would be a level of realism. Do you prefer very realistic drawings or do you prefer simplified artworks, leaving out what is unnecessary. Another aspect which is influencing your art style is also the medium you use. Because this creates totally different look for your art. Of course you can use different texture brushes in digital form, but it will still look a little bit different from the traditional ink and water color look. One of the last things I want to mention here when considering the style for your flowers is the type of the flowers you draw often. You can maybe be recognized for the roses in your art, or did you draw peonies or lilies very often. Similar as in other areas of your art and drawings, you may be known for drawing only animals and especially tigers, for example. Going back to the flowers, I really like to draw a peonies. I was thinking maybe why? So you can start thinking, "why do you like to draw certain thing?" For example, I love drawing peonies because I like their soft and fluid shapes and we also have a lot of them in my neighborhood. When I'm looking for an inspiration for new shapes and compositions, types of flowers to draw, one of the main sources of inspiration for me is the world around us. When I go for walks, I always have my phone or a camera with me and I take pictures and videos and I save them to my reference library on my computer. Whenever I need new inspiration, I have plenty to choose from. If you are looking for more inspiration from other artists and you are not sure how to stylize your floral art, you can look at your favorite artists and analyze what you like about their art. Good practice is to look at at least ten different artists you admire and their design. Try to notice their line art or the lack of it. Maybe they don't use outlines or line art at all. What colors do they usually use? What do you like about their color use? What medium do they use? Notice the amount of details, shading and other features. I want to emphasize, try to look at many different artists, not just one for an inspiration. Now I would like to show you some of my references for the flowers and what inspires me to create floral illustrations in my favorite style. You might have heard the phrase, "standing on the shoulders of giants and learning from the masters of the past". You can get a lot of inspiration from the old art and we might forget these with all the social media and amounts of new content we see every day. So first, I would like to show you old Asian art prints from the last century. One of my favorite styles to get inspired by for my floral illustrations is old Asian art and prints, especially Japanese posters. You can just Google this or you can visit my Pinterest board where you can see all the resources and link to this board will be in the resources section. What I really like in this type of art is that in most of these artworks there is very nice floral with organic shapes. The line art is usually quite noticeable part of the whole illustration. I also admire the color combinations the artist used. Another thing I notice is the most of the flower heads have very open petals with variety in shapes. What I also really like in this style is that the flowers are quite realistic and have a lot of details so they stand out quite nicely on the simple backgrounds. Going back to the real world for the inspiration, because I really like the look of the open flower heads and very flowy shapes of the petals, so I sometimes look for references in animal world, specifically in fish tails, because they have beautiful detail tails, almost like a skirt, which it feels very relaxing and beautiful to me. The fish tails reminds me of shapes of peony flowers. I usually try to stylize the leaves of the peony and magnolia more than they are in the real world and I usually try to go this direction of flowy soft shapes for the petals. Of course, it's up to you how much you will be inspired by these fish tails and how much you would stylize the leaves. Another inspiration for my floral art are antique English botanical paints from last century because they are a great inspiration for simple poster compositions. I just love the simplicity here and the flowers on the paints usually have very delicate realistic look placed against the simple backgrounds so they can stand out better. Another inspiration for a style is Alphonse Mucha and he's one of my favorite artists from the last century. I admire the colors and the compositions in his artworks. Also the variety in the flower types in his art is very beautiful. I also really like the way how he draws the lilies and he's also using the combination of open flowers and the new growing flower heads. I very much like the dominant line art in his artworks too. You can notice these several variety in the colors of the flowers as well. If the flowers are pink, he uses a variety of soft pink shades. What I also like in his art, are the poses for his characters and the implementation with the composition and the flowers. All of his artworks are very gracious and elegant. One of the last things I wanted to mention here is flower bouquet photographing. These can be very nice inspiration for compositions and how on which flowers you can combine together in the bouquets. But just remember, try not to copy one picture of a flower bouquet one-to-one in one illustration. Make sure you get inspired from different references. I hope these examples inspired you and you have a lot of ideas now about what florals you would like to create next and how you can start or continue developing your own floral style. 14. BONUS Timelapses: 15. Final Thoughts: Congratulations, you finished the class. Thank you so much for being here and I hope you'll learn lots of new things about how to draw flowers, and you are now full of new ideas for your future floral illustrations. As a class project, I would like you to Create a floral composition with flower or flowers which inspire you the most. Create thumbnails for your own illustration idea, like I showed you while talking about flower compositions. If you would like to follow some of my composition ideas which I showed you, you can find them in the resources. Also, please share your ideas and illustrations with other classmates in the project section. I can't wait to see all of your awesome art works. If you would like me to share your illustrations on Instagram, please post your creations to your profile and tag me art side of life, and in this way, I will get notified and I can re-share your art. If you like the class, please leave a review. Because first of all, I appreciate it a lot, and second, you will also help other students to discover the class and you might contribute to their artistic journey too. If you have a friend who loves flowers and floral art, please feel free to share this class with them. If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a comment in the discussion section, I would love to help. Thank you again so much for being here and see you in the next class.