Transcripts
1. Introduction: Flowers are not just pretty, they are also one of the most popular subjects for art licensing and design. If you're an illustrator or an artist or a designer, there will probably come a point in your career where somebody's going to ask you to draw flowers. I've created this class to show you how I approached floral design. Hi, I'm Sandra Bowers and I'm an illustrator and surface pattern designer. I create illustrations and patterns for clients around the world to use in home decor, greeting cards, fabrics, educational publishing, and I also sell my original painting. In this class, I will show you my approach to drawing flowers in a very simple way. We're not going to create realistic flowers. We're going to stylize them and simplify them. Even if you don't know how to draw, you're going to be able to create your own silo flowers. First, we will go through a phase of ugly sketching, where you're not suppose to create anything pretty. You just have to understand the shapes and draw whatever you see. This way you can enjoy the process because you don't have to be stressed about creating a masterpiece. Just thinking that you are creating something that's supposed to be ugly, will take all the pressure off your chest. Then we're going to use those ugly sketches or maybe they're actually pretty and you didn't even think they would be. We're going to go over them in a very simple manner to create beautiful illustrations. I will show you how to create inked flowers and how to create digital watercolor flowers. If you've never used Procreate before, don't worry, I will show you step-by-step what I do and why I do it. You'll be able to download a ton of free reference images taken by me that you can use to study the flowers and make your own illustrations. I will also provide you with my sketches and two of the brushes in my super-simple watercolor brush set for Procreate, and one extra brush that its not included there and it's super cool. After you've learned all these basics, we're going to create a watercolor and ink bouquet. By the end of the class, you'll have the skills to make your own arrangements on your own flowers. You can use them for web design, for example, or to create your own products. If you follow the process, you'll see that it's not so difficult. The class will be done in Procreate, but you can follow along with any medium you want. You can use any traditional medium or your favorite app. The basics are the same. Join me and let's start creating flowers.
2. Supplies and Class Project: For the class project, you can choose your favorite flowers or you can use the pictures that I will provide for you to download. They're in the resource area of the classes, you have to press the "See more" button and you'll see them on the right-hand side. After you've decided which flowers to draw, I suggest you do the practice exercises, do as many as you want, and then try out the inking and the digital watercolors, or use any medium you prefer. I will be creating my flowers with Procreate and an iPad and Apple Pencil, but you can follow this class with any medium you want. I printed mine into a greeting card. You can choose to make yours as a greeting card, or an art print, or even make it to create some products on a print-on-demand site.
3. Creating the File: In this lesson, we're going to set up our file. We have our gallery here, and here you press to create a new file. You have some settings here that are pre-saved, and this is the one I use the most, 12 by 12 at 300 PPI. If you press on it, it'll open a file. So you don't have to set up your file every time. Now, if you don't have that preset saved, just press here, and here you can name your Canvas or your preset and you can select the width and height. You can do it in pixels into centimeters, millimeters. I like to create my files at 12 inches by 12 inches usually, and 300 is the printer resolution. I always created at these, even if I'm going to use it for web. I prefer making the files always at 300 PPI even if I need web resolution. I can make them smaller later, but I cannot make them larger later. Here it will show you the maximum number of layers this depends on what iPad you have, and here you can use a color profile. The CMYK is usually for print and RGB for screens, but some things now require RGB for printing, like my Canon printer prints better in RGB. I usually use these presets. Just have in mind that the CMYK mutes the colors especially the neons, the yellows, the greens, the pinks. Here you can see the difference between the same illustration in CMYK and RGB. Just have this in mind. If you need something in CMYK, I would recommend to start in CMYK. Here you can set your time-lapse settings. This is what I use, and then I don't touch anything else and click "Create". Here we have our Canvas, and now we're going to set up background color just because I don't like working on the super white screen. I prefer something a bit more muted. I'm going to choose a very light yellow color. Some people use gray, like a toned paper look. This is just a preference. I always like to keep my favorite brushes in a separate folder so I can access them easily. But if you drag them here, you'll see the brush and that way you can create a new brush set. I'm going to call it, favorite. Then I can go into my other brush set and start dragging things in, or just go through the set, for example, this is my super-simple watercolors set, and I'll duplicate this brush and drag it. I'll touch the name of the set and I drop it in there, and now I can go in and add more brushes. I duplicate them just so I'm not disorganizing my original set. I don't like using too many brushes, so I prefer having small sets. We're going to use only tree brushes for this class, and I will provide them. You can download them from the class resources. If you don't know how to install them, I will leave a link to my YouTube video explaining how to do it. Now let's check out the quick menu. Go here to the actions and select Preferences, and here you'll find gesture controls. You can set up all these gestures but we're going to concentrate on the quick menu. Here, you can customize it and see how you are going to invoke these menu. Right now it's set to touch so I'll show you. Right now if I press this little E here on the left, the eyedropper comes up. But I don't need that because I never use it like that. I'm going to go back in to gesture controls and select Tap that key and press Done. So let's close this and let me show you. Every time I tap it, I get access to these six menus, and if I leave it, push, I can customize it. There's so many actions you can choose. You just go through it and choose the six things you use the most, for example, I have new layer here and the coolest one is, you can select a brush. So select one from your set, and you choose the brush. Instead of having to go in and look through your sets, you'll have your favorite brushes at your fingertip. It's so cool and it takes so much time. In the next lesson, we're going to start drawing and we're going to start drawing the part of the flower.
4. Buds - Simplified Shapes: In this lesson, we're going to draw a bud. I have my brush here, select that. We're going to use the incur brush and I have some buds here. I like to be able to touch them and turn them around and analyze them when I'm learning how to draw them because this way, you can turn them, you can touch them, you can see the qualities they have, but you don't need to. You can do it from a picture too. What we're going to start doing is understanding the very basic simple shape and drawing them. These exercises, you are not supposed to be drawing anything pretty. For example, here is the stem. Now we're going to simplify this shape here. That's it. That's our simplified bud shape. Now when we're going to create a bit more detailed shape, we're going to look at the details and characteristics like the top, where it is not totally pointed. It has this hole here and then it has these creases here. Let's add the little leaf too. Now you have that simplified shape and this will be the base for your other drawing. There are buds where they have burst and the petals have started coming out. Let's see. This one is a closed one. I'll draw that one first. It's basically an oval and a little stem. Now when we're going to draw a bit more detailed version, we're going to keep that oval under stem and make the little leaf. If you have it in your hand, you can start by pulling it apart. I don't know if you can see it, but it has little green petals that start to cover the flower. In here I'm separating them. They're tiny and they start covering this oval shape. I'm going to indicate them here. I'm not drawing them all straight like that, I'm curving them around the shape. That creates a totally different effect. In the top it has little tiny dots almost. I'm going to draw them there. Let's draw the open one. It's the same shape in the bottom. So it's an oval with a stem. But in the top, the petals have buds and they create a triangle. That's the simplified. I told you anybody can draw a flower. Now let's detail it a bit more. Again, I'm going to draw these green petals here and the stem and add the little leaf. I can see there's a second round of green little leaves or a petals here. I'm going to draw them too and then I'm going to create the triangle petals that came out of the flower. I don't want them to be all like these, straight forward because they're intertwined. I'm going to make them all over to this sky so they are all not going straight up and these will create some interest in the flower. Let's undo that and draw it here. The idea with this exercise, is not that you're creating beautiful drawings. This is for your hand and your brain to start understanding the shape. So I have to have in mind the shape here and just fill it in with details. We will create pretty drawings at the end but for now, just use these to understand what's going on. This is another type of bud. If you look at it from the top, it's triangular and it's really cool and on the side it's just this very simplified shape. It has like a little ball there. Now we will add a bit more detail. It has these vein here and it has those little tiny indentations there. Let's add the leaf too. Now let's try it with this one. I just drew the very basic shape and here I'm just going to try to add a tiny bit more detail. So I'm going to be a bit more careful with my shape. Make a squiggly line here and make this a bit prettier not just straight like in first drawing and add the little lines. I'm trying to add a bit more information, but I'm not trying to create a beautiful drawing. If you do this a lot and you understand your subject matter like this, your brain will have all this information inside for when you're drawing later. You're going to be able to create your own style of flowers without having to resort to looking at something like in real life or in a picture. In the next lesson, we're going to start drawing some side view.
5. Side View Flowers- Simplified Shapes: In this lesson, we're going to continue simplifying our shapes, and we're going to create Cybil flowers, for example, a rose. If you turned a rose around and you try to see what's in behind the petals, you'll see it's like a cylinder with a rounded bottom and then inside it, it has the little bud that's like this. Here's the stem. Then I like to draw an indication of the petals. They're going around and intertwining. Now let's draw a bit of a more detailed one. Here's a petal that starts going around that bud. I like drawing these first lines, so I have a guide and then all these petals are like little ears and some you can see go down. Then there's some front petals and then the petals start getting larger. I'm going to erase these line because you're not supposed to see it. It's just a guide. Now let's create the base shape here and one big petal that's falling off this side. This is a basic shape for the rose and you can add more petals or less petals or bigger petals but this is basically what it looks like. Then it has these little leaves here and the stem. Let's add one more. Now this lily. If you try to simplify the shape, you'll see that it stills very long petals like a V-shape and the stem. Then now we're going to add a bit more detail and try to understand how those petals are positioned. These petals fold over so I'm creating an indication of those folds here. They have a fold, these two of them and they have these very thick lines, I'll put down those lines too. These ones would have the same lines. You can't see them depending on the angle, but they would have those thick veins in the middle. There's not a petal on the back and the stem. It's a thick stem. Now this one's very similar to these, but the petals are lighter and they fold over more. These are very straight and these ones are very, very thin so they pulled over. The basic shape of this is like a little bell. I don't know how you would call this shape this way, but let's call it a little upside down bell. It has a little bulb here on the stem and then it has this pistils. Now we are going to create a bit more variation of the petals so make your lines not totally straight. It has some folds so draw the folds. We're going to have a special lesson on folds so you understand how to draw them easier. Try not to do these like finish lines. This is called a tangent. Don't finish the lines exactly where there's an angle because it doesn't look so pleasing to the eye. It looks better this way. The good thing about having the flower in your hand is that you can move the petals and understand what's happening. These pistils, they all end up with a little round shape, but then there is a big one that has an elongated shape. That's probably the stamen. By studying real life flowers, you get all this information and then when you see pictures of other flowers that you don't have access to you will know what you have to draw because you already understand the flower. I started adding these textures, but I think they look too rough, so I'm going to reduce the size of my brush. These petals are very, very delicate and using thin lines gives them the illusion of being thin and delicate. Now I can go back to the bigger size brush to continue making the rest of the shape. I'm going to add the leaf too and the little bud with the leaf. See this one has more information than the previous ones? You can make them as detailed as you want. I just don't want you to be stuck in trying to make very pretty drawings in these stage of the class because that's not the point of the exercises. You'll learn more if you're not obsessing over the details. Now this daisy, it has a little triangular cop here and this stem and then it's like an upside down umbrella. Now when we're adding more details, we'll see that this is made out of little thin leaves and the stem. Then the petals start coming up here. They're almost rectangular, but they end up with those jagged edge and they're very organized. Just ones are smaller than the others but none of them are folding anywhere and they're going straight up. You don't have to use fancy flowers to study these. I picked these ones from my lawn. This one, for example, has a different bulge here, it is round, not a triangle like the previous one and then the petals go out this way and here you can see them coming to the front, coming towards you. Then these very bulgy part of the middle here goes up. Then we have a very tiny stem. When we draw that in a more detailed manner, I will just create the little petals. These ones you're seeing from the front so they're foreshortened and then we have little dots here and that's it. Finally this is Gerbera. It's a very strong flower. The stem is very thick and it's full of petals. So I'm making a thick stem. Then it's like the same upside down umbrella shape and now let's detail that a bit. You see here it has a lot of tiny little green leaves that are overlapping and the big stem. Then the petals here are not rounded like the outer flower or straight. They end up in a bit of a point and they fold everywhere. They're not super organized. I'm overlapping it in different way. Some are coming out of the green leaves and falling down and it's very full. There you have it. We have studied several shapes of flowers from this side. You can study other ones, as many as you want. You'll see that the more you practice these, the easier it will become to draw flowers. In the next lesson, we're going to simplify the centers of the flowers.
6. The Center - Simplified Shapes: In this lesson, we're going to study the different types of centers of the flowers. Let's start with this poor little flower I just picked from my garden and it's starting to die. This one has a round center and then it has all these pestles going around it. It's actually really pretty. This is the basic shape. If we add more detail, we can draw the pestles properly. It's very, very full and then in the middle, it's made of very, very compact little dots. The pestles also end in little round shapes. Let's move these one a bit, and let's look at this one. This one's an irregular shaped, almost like a star and a lot of pestles going out, but not as many as in the previous one. If you look at it closer and want to add more detail, you'll see it's made of little compact dots. Then the pestles end in little circular shapes also, and they're not as organized as the previous one. Some are longer than the other ones. This one has almost like a grid shape. Now let's make that one a bit more detailed. I'm going to create lines that are very close to each other. I like that this brush has a bit of variation. It starts off thinner and sometimes it creates darker areas and thicker areas. That works really great for these. Then you can just use the eraser to erase the overlaps. Now this one doesn't have a proper center. It's just that you can see the pestles. That will be the basic idea. Let me move it because I'm not going to have space for the front view flowers later. Now I'm detailing the pestles a bit more and they are all different shapes and I'm seeing them from above. But I can still see a bit of these lines of them going down. Now the gerbera is super interesting. It has these middle area and then two layers of different types of petals. The middle area is very, very condensed dot. Then you start getting these tiny, tiny petals. See, there's a bunch. I not making them regular like this, like very organized. I'm creating them very random like that, see that looks way better than when they're very organized. Now the petals start getting a bit bigger. Now we're going to make the even bigger petals They're not regular, some are bigger than the others and they don't seem to follow any pattern. They're just random. Maybe here it's not so easy to see the difference between the three areas, but once you add color, you'll be able to tell them apart or if you're just creating an ink illustration, you would create these with more detail so you can easily tell those areas apart. The rose don't have a distinguishable center. It's just petals that go around. Then this is the outer shape. You have the little spiral in the middle and then you have petals that go around it. They are not like these where one ends and then the other one starts there. That looks weird. They are overlapping and sometimes you can see these little folds here. I'm making the petals overlap and I'm making some folds here. Basically the rose's center is a whole flower. In the next lesson, we're going to create the front view of the flowers.
7. Front View- Simplified Shapes: In this lesson, we're going to study the front view of the flowers. Let's start with our first flower. It has died, so this is the only thing I could save. But it has a very simple shape, it has five petals. Let's reduce the size here and rearrange this again so they fit. See I have uniform selected so I don't ruin the proportions. The petals are not totally round. If you're struggling to position your petals, you can draw lines on top of your illustration to guide you. See these petals are not totally in the center with this line, and these ones come out like this. Or you can also reduce the opacity of the sketch layer, create a new layer, and then draw on top using the base layer to guide you. Let's delete that and keep creating our flowers here. I reduced the size of my brush to create the marks of the petals because they are very subtle lines. Now, this one is basically a circle like this, and then it has some petals that come out further. Then for the detailed view, I'll make the petals the same shapes but different sizes. Make sure that some of them you can see the whole petal, and then some of them are hiding behind other petals. Just keep in mind these petals, they'll go out further out, so it's not a totally perfect circle. Now, this one has a lot of little thin petals. See that they're not organized and some are folding over and there are some spaces and gaps in between them. Even in these very simplified sketches, these little details will bring your flowers to life. Remember, you can rotate your canvas to make drawing some things easier. I think that looks good. Let's bring back the lily. In this one, if you're looking at it from the top, you're seeing these very angular shapes, a big triangle and then another triangle in the middle like a star. Here the petals have to fold. They fold towards the middle, so I'm going to have that in mind here. They hug around the pistils. Let me make this smaller and I'll make the middle petals first, they're all folding in like this one. This one, you see smaller because of the angle I'm holding the flower in. Then it has three big flat petals on the outside, but these one looks shorter than the other ones. They have that center vein. Let's make these smaller too. Now, this one is also a circle, but it's not totally centered, some areas are larger than the other ones, and then it has all these petals, they're very dense. You can see that some are folding to the back and some to the sides, and they don't follow any pattern. Some of the big ones start right at the center besides these little ones. I'm going to go in and very randomly fill this with different sizes. Some petals are twisted to the side, so make sure you add some of those to create some variation and interest, and just keep adding more petals having the original basic shape in mind. I'm going to indicate some lines here just because they're visible in some petals. I probably need to make the flower rounder because right now it's very spiky. It's not like this one that has holes, this one is very compact. In the next lesson, we will go over the petals and how they fold.
8. Petals and Folds: In today's lesson, we will go over petals and their folds. You have a basic petal shape here, and you'll see that when they're very thin petals, they fold over. This one is very thin and it's moving around too much. If you see them from the top, you'll see that they have a flat shape on the top, and then if you turn it around, you'll see the fold coming down. I don't like to draw it straight just to give the indication of movement. If you see it from this side, it's like this. Now these petals have a different shape and they start very thin on the bottom, and these petals don't fold as easily as the other ones because they're thicker. These ones usually look very straight from this side, and unless the flower has been bent by something, they're not naturally curly. I'm going to bend these one artificially, so you can see how they would bend. I create an angle, and then you can see the bottom part of the petal here. Drawing the events is very useful to understand the petal direction. Here, I'm drawing it from the other side. Let's take out one of these petals, which is thin, but not as thin as the first one. Let's draw their basic shape here, these ones have a slight curl up here, but it's not a fold, It's a curl. If you see it on this side, it's like this basic line here, and then it has a belly. Then you see the part that goes underneath it here, where it has curled down. If you turn it around, you'll see a flat shape here and a little belly that goes up, and then you see the underside of the petal here. Again, I'm drawing the veins to understand where they're going. It's very useful to do this with leaves too, because they also have different thicknesses and fold over differently. This petal from the lily, is one of the thickest ones I have seen, so it behaves differently. It's very rigid, and the folds are very pronounced. If you look at it here, you can see these folds and it has a very defined vein in the middle. If you see it from the side, it's a very simple shape, and here you can see the vein. If you angle it a bit, you'll see the same thing, but you'll be able to see the other side of that petal. Again, the veins are going this way. Now this is a rose petal. Rose petals are very wide and they fold over a lot, because they're very delicate, though they create this angle here on the top. Then the veins go this way. If you don't like a shape of your petal, you can use a transformation tool to modify it. Just make sure that uniform is not selected, select free form and that way you can alter the proportions. This is wider, and I like that more. If we turn this around, we'll see that rose petals form like a cup, because they're wrapping over the middle bulb, and then they usually have folds. Their veins are coming this way. When you're drawing roses, you'll usually see petals like these coming towards you. You'll see like a U-shape on the fold, and then the big belly of the petal. This is how the veins go. Let's dive deeper into folds now. I'm going to do this with geometric shapes because it's easier to learn this way than thinking of petals. But if you're just starting, grabbing a piece of paper is actually super useful. Just fold that in different places, and draw that. This one is like a rose petal that's looking straight at you. If it's totally straight, you can't really see what's happening there. Now let's make really complex shapes. It's very rare that petals will be folded this way, but the more you practice with complex shapes, the more your brain is going to start to understand how these things behave. It doesn't have to be perfect, like mine is obviously not perfect here. It's a weird angle, but you'll start to get the hang of it. Then you can use a real petal and start making those folds in a petal. Start with a basic shape petal, I think this one is the easiest. I'm just translating the geometric shape through the petal shape. Again, the more exercises like these you do, the more you'll learn and the easier it will be. Here we will actually see what's happening because the petal ends up in a point. For this very complicated one, what I'm doing is keeping the angles the same. I'm just guided by those angles, and then I just connect the lines. You can also choose a different color and draw the petals on top of your previous geometric drawings, and that way it might be easier. We have all our basic shapes down, and in the next lesson we can actually start creating some pretty flowers.
9. Inked Style: In this lesson, we're going to create some inked flowers. I'm going to use the sketches I created in the previous lesson as a guide, you can use your own or you can use the ones I have provided to download. Just go here and add and insert a file or a photo depending on where you saved it. I have mine in my photos, so I'll select my file and this is made for a 12 by 12 inch Canvas. Just hit here and place it. I'm going to rename this layer so I know this is my sketches layer. I'm going to reduce the opacity. I usually work with it at a very low opacity, but I'm going to leave it a bit higher so you can see what I'm doing. Now add another layer, and this is why we are going to create our flowers. You can create one flower per layer, or you can create them all in the same layer. I'm going to create one per layer. Now we're going to use this as a guide. It doesn't matter that your sketch was ugly because now we're going to create pretty lines on top of it and it will start looking pretty. Just grab your brush, and I'm going to make the brush bigger here to add these little dots. Now I'm actually being careful that I'm creating the right textures, so I'm paying a lot of attention to the little details. I'll make my petals here a bit prettier. This doesn't mean they have to be perfect. Depending on your style, it could look more hand-drawn or more realistic. Just experiment and find what style you like the best, how tidy you want your illustrations, how realistic. I like this brush because it has pressure variation, but you can use any brush you want. Different brushes will create different effects, so also experiment with that. I'm starting to make a bit bigger petals out here. If you zoom out, you can't really see the details, and that's usually the size that people will see it, so we get to zoom in a lot, but people don't see it in products are already printed, don't get to do that, so don't worry too much about it being super perfect. Now that I'm done with the middle, I'm going to start creating the bigger petals. Here I'm being more careful to where my line start and end. As I said, I'm just basically tracing over my sketch, but by being very careful with how I place my lines and making them slower is going to look way prettier. I'm going to speed this up because it's the same thing over and over again. Just be patient, and if you don't like it how it looks the first time, just erase it and do it again. Now we're done and we're going to start adding details. I'm not even looking at the flower too much now. I'm just doing these wherever I think it would look good. You can follow your flower guide as much as you want. The more realistic you want your illustrations to look, and the more you should look closely at your reference. I like mine to be very stylized. I like to be playful and just add them where I think they will look right. I'm doing the same here with the shadows and lines. I'm just creating lines with a very thin brush. There's a lot of different ways to do this. You can fill in the whole petals. You can create one with two lines. You can add shading to the beginning of the petal. You can mix them altogether. Just do whatever feels better for your art. Right here I'm mixing a ton of different styles just to see which one I like best. You could also not add any shading if you want and just leave it as the line work. What I'm trying to show with the shading here is that the places where the petals meet are darker because the petals on the top are creating a shadow underneath. If I start darkening some areas, I'll start creating contrast and the illustration starts coming to life. Now let's create a second layer for our second flower. I think it is an alstroemeria, I hope that's how you pronounce it. But it's weird because this one doesn't have the little markings and some that all of them had. I don't know if it's a different variety or what. But I like the ones with the dots. I'm not changing my sketch to much, see. I'm just highlighting it up a bit being way more precise with my lines, and just doing that will make it look better. Again, I'll reduce this size, I'll turn off my sketch, and then I can make the veins. This one has very defined veins here, so I want to show that. Now I want to add some shading. For this flower, I will add way more shading than the other one so you can see how that would look. Just creating soft lines here where the petals meet, and then up here. I'm thinking about the direction of the petal. If it's going this way, I'm going to create the lines this way. But here, it has folded over, so now the veins would go this way. These ones are back there in the shadows, so I wanted to add more shadows. The more shadows you add, the more information the I will have. So that it creates a more three-dimensional illusion. It is easier to understand that these petals are in the back, if they have shadows. Turn on our sketch, see that I have three of these here. I can create different flowers from the same sketch. For example, here I wanted to create these one that has these wider petals on there folded over. See, these ones here go into the middle. So I'm going to draw them like this, and this is where you start making creative decisions and using what you already learned to create new flowers. For me, this is the most exciting part, I don't really like looking at references a lot, so just being able to come up with the flowers from my imagination is the best thing. Now, that I understand the folds and I understand how the flowers work and look, I can do that. Because even if I have this flower here, I'm not really following it. I'm just using it to understand how some petals fold and how they're positioned. The sketch in the bottom is really useful because it helps me keep my shapes right. Using different brush sizes to create the lines will make your illustrations more interesting. I like to turn off the sketch layer when I'm adding the details because this way, I can concentrate on what I'm doing without having the sketch distract me. Now, I'm adding some shadows around here just by stapling, and now, some details to the petals. If I tilt my brush, I can get different effects. I'm just going to time-lapse this so you can see how I went over these other flower. It's basically the same thing. Just using my sketch to guide me and just perfect the lines a bit. From the same sketch, I'm creating three different flowers. Varying the sizes also works a lot, so you can create nice compositions. These exercises with different materials may be used for additional ink or color pencils, water colors, or even in Procreate just using different brushes. Because when you change things up a bit, you'll start discovering things that you like and you didn't know you liked, or things that you can do better than others. This way, you will start honing in your style. I usually like adding a lot of details and I love creating these thin lines. It so soothing for me to just sit there after I have the first basic shape and just add and add details. But that's just my style, and you don't have to do it like I do it. It's better if you just find what you enjoy the most and what comes more natural to you. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you some useful tools to create even more variations of your sketches.
10. Useful Tools to Modify Sketches: In this lesson, I'm going to show you some useful tools to modify your sketches. You can use a sketch I have provided in a class downloads, or you can use your own sketches. Go here to "Actions", "Insert a file or a photo", depending on where you have it, I have mine in Photos, and select your image. Now, I'm going to select this one and drag down with tree fingers and "Cut & Paste" to separate it so it's on its own layer. The first one is the warp tool. Select the "Transform Tool" and here, select "Warp". Choose "Advanced Mesh", and now you can use these handles to modify your flowers. I'm going to make these one look like it's a side-view flower. I can modify these sides on the top too to make it look more realistic. This is a very easy way to create a side-view flower from a front view flower. Now, if I select another color, I can go over the sketch and modify some areas. I'm creating a more rounded base here, and I'm modifying the petals so they fold over more naturally. Then I can use this previous sketch I had made to create another flower. This is an easy way to create flowers fast in case you need a lot of flowers to fill a bouquet or you're creating a pattern with many flowers. Now, you turn off your background layer, you can keep adding more details. This is the expanded Liquify tool which is so cool. It's here in Adjustments, "Liquify", and make sure you select "Expand". Here you can modify the size of your brush. I'm just pressing here and leaving it press. It's bolding out the petals so I'm creating a totally different flower. Then I just hit here twice and it's done. Now, we're going to use the Selection tool to modify parts of the flowers. I select this here and make sure Freehand is selected. Then I choose the "Transformation" tool, select ''Uniform'', and then I can vary the size of different parts of the flowers. Like this one will have a very big center and that would be a totally different flower. Now, we're going to use a Liquify tool again but by using the Push function. These will move whole areas of your flower around. These way, you'll create different shapes of the same kind of flower so you'll have variations of it. Hit this twice, and I'm going to erase the leaves on the board. I'm going to select that, swipe down with three fingers, "Copy & Paste", and then move it. Then go back to "Liquify", unmodify this one again. Remember, we're just modifying the sketches here. Then you would go in, in another layer and create the detailed version, like the final version. But these will be an amazing guide. See how you created two different flowers from just one. So use this when you have to create many different flowers of the same kind or you need to save some time. In the next lesson, we're going to create watercolor style flowers.
11. Watercolor Style - Part 1: In this lesson, we're going to start creating our final bouquet. I have created this sketch on pen on paper, and I took a picture of it and now I'm going to insert it here. I go to insert a photo because I have it in my photo roll, and I will place it. I will provide this for you to download so you can follow my sketch. You can go through hue saturation and brightness and make it brighter. This way, it will be easier to see your sketch later. The one I have provided for you is already fixed, so you don't have to do this. I'm going to set the layer to multiply. This acts like tracing paper, so this will sit on top of all your layers, and you'll be able to see underneath. I'm going to reduce the opacity. You can make it as dark or light as you want. Now, in this layer underneath, I'm going to create my watercolor flower. Let's rename it, and I'm going to select the brush. I'm going to start with the Inker brush to create the basic shapes. Choose whatever color you want. We're going to change this later. As in water colors, I'm going to start from the back to the front. So the first layers that I'm going to create are the back ones. These are the petals that would be in the back. Now I'm going to create another layer and choose another color. Again, it doesn't matter what color it is, and I'm going to create some more petals that are in front of the ones I already drew. Next, I'm going to create these little tiny pedals in the middle. I'll create another layer, choose another color, and draw those in. Again another layer, another color, and more details. You'll see later what more layers do. Finally the middle, in another layer and another color. You'll understand in a bit, why we're doing this. I'm going to turn off my sketch layer, and now we want to make everything very light, because in watercolors you start from light to dark. If I swipe to the right, I will turn on alpha lock. You'll see that a checkered board appears in each of your layers. Let me select this brush and show you what alpha lock does. I'll choose another color. If I paint here, I will only paint on that layer, so I can go outside of the lines. Now we're going to use that to create a watercolor style. I usually use this light color for my base color. Now I'm going to go into my layers and on each layer, touch and press Fill Layer. This way we're making our shapes a very light color like the paper color and that is how traditional water colors would work. You would go from light to dark because watercolors are transparent, so that's what we're going to mimic. We're going to start from the bottom of our stack and go to the top, and there's two ways you can do this. You can choose to paint on this layer, and because alpha lock is selected, you won't be going outside the lines, or if you have a lot of layers available and you want to make this shading editable, you can add another layer. Tap on it and select Clipping Mask and it does exactly the same thing. But it'll be in a separate layer so if you want to edit either the base color or the shading, you can do that. But for now let's do it in the same layer. I'm just going to paint all the bottom petals. With this brush, if I press harder the paint will go lighter. Let me show you. Here I'm applying even pressure, and here I'm going to apply more pressure. Then less pressure, and you will see it would create color variations. At the end, the less pressure I add, the more water it adds, so you can create very nice effects. Just go around and vary the amount of pressure. I'm trying to make the darker parts closer to the center of the flower and where the shadows of the other petals would go. See how pretty those effects are. Now let's choose another color to darken the areas where the pedals are attached to the flower and where they would have shadows from the other petals. I like to use several colors because in watercolor I do that too. But you can use the same color if you want. If I press softly at the end, it will be like I'm adding water. Now let's choose the outer layer and select another color. I'm trying to leave light areas here so that it creates contrast with the petal behind it. I forgot to paint that one in the previous layer so we'll go back in later and fix that. These brushes are part of my super-simple watercolor brush set for Procreate. If you want to buy the whole set or see how it works, just head over to my website or I will leave a link in the class description. Let me show you here how these brush works. When I press harder, it creates darker areas. This brush is not included in my set and it has been made specially for you and for my newsletter subscribers. They will get it in the next newsletter I release. Let's go back to our flower and use this brush to create some more shading in the middle. Try to experiment where you put the shading and see what you like. You don't have to follow my style, this is just a guideline. You can make the shadows as dark as you want. This brush will overlay paint, so every time you go on top of it, it will create a darker shade of the color you're using. Let's go back and choose the Watercolor rough edges brush to fix this petal that we'd left behind. I'm using a totally different color to add a bit more shadows to my already painted petals. The idea is to separate the back petals from the front petals. Then go back to the front petals and add a bit more shadows too. Hey, I think using these different variations of pinks and this coral, orangey color just makes it more interesting. Now let's start with our little petals. I'm going to fill them in. I'm lifting my brush constantly and pushing it harder so it creates a darker color, and then I'm going to add an even darker color. This is why I like to create different layers because the more layers you, add the more color variations you can add and different tones and shade; and this makes the colors richer. Now let's create the center. I'm adding a bit of green here. I'm overlaying the paint, and as you overlay the paint it just mixes with each other. After I'm done with these, I like to create one top layer and with my Inker brush, I like to add some details. I do this in traditional watercolors also. After I'm done creating my base layers, I use a brush with concentrated paint so it's very dark, and I add these details. Then I like to use white Dr. Ph. Martin's bleed proof white, or white gouache to create light details. I'm translating that to my digital art. Try to not just copy what I'm doing, try to understand why I'm doing it, and then you can adapt it to your own style. Now if I swipe to the right showing all these layers, I can group them and rename this group. Let's say you're running out of layers, what do you do? You can merge these layers together to create only one layer, but if you want to keep it editable, you go to the gallery, you swipe to the left and duplicate your file. Then you open that one, and then there you flatten your group so it's only one layer, and then you can create more layers with more things. But if you want to go back and edit this flower, you'll still have your other original file in the gallery so you can make changes there. In the next lesson, we're going to paint another watercolor style flower.
12. Watercolor Style - Part 2: In this lesson, we will continue painting our watercolors. Lets turn on this sketch layer and we will paint this flower. I'm going to create a new layer and drag it underneath this sketch layer, make sure my ink brush is selected, and choose whatever color for the base of the flower. Again, I'm going to start from the back petals to the front ones. When I'm painting big areas like these, I like to create my outline and then drag my color in it so it fills it in. Then we'll create another layer, choose another color and paint this two petals. I'm not painting that third one because that one goes on top of these ones, so that one will have its own layer. Now one more layer for the pistil and we're done with our base color. Again, I'm going to swipe to the right with two fingers to activate the Alpha lock on each one, choose a light color. I'm going to start with a light purple color here and then touch each layer and select "Fill Layer." I would usually start with an even lighter purple but this is so you see the shapes as I'm filling them. I'll turn off my sketch layer and then start choosing my colors. Let's start with this purple. I'm just going over it several times and trying to create a lot of texture. Again, I'm darkening the areas where the petals meet. I'm using a darker purple now. I want to create some dark, dark shadows on this one. See the texture, I love this brush. I hope you'll love it too. Now let's go to the other petals and choose these light color. Usually watercolor brushes are very transparent, then you can't use light colors with them, but with this one you can so I think it's very versatile. You absolutely don't have to use my brushes, you can use whatever brush you want. I'm just showing you with these ones because this is what I use for my professional work. I want to add a dark red here. More like a maroon. See how I create those effects, it's random, it's just varying the pressure of your brush. Lets add some pink here, that is because I wanted to go well with that flower and perhaps so I think it should have some of the pink that one has. Finally the last petal. This one we want to make really really dark in the middle, so the pistil really stand out against it. Then I'm going to choose my other brush and a light color, and add some light areas to the side where the petal would fold. See I'm not doing this super realistic, you can do it as realistic as you want. I like my flowers very stylized, so this is how I would do fold. I'm going to go back to these other petals and do the same thing. I won't make these ones bold so much. I'm going to add a beat of yellow because remember these one had very strong veins and they were a yellowish-green, but I think this yellow will look pretty. I will add it to all of the petals. Now let's make the pistils with the same yellow, maybe a bit of green. I am using similar colors to the other flower so they match. Let's erase this part here because I wanted it to look like it's coming from inside the fold. Again, I'm going to create another layer and use my ink brush to create some details. Let's make that vein more visible and you can make up details and textures for your plan. I'm going to add very light veins, maybe not so light, make them a bit bigger. I hope you can see them there. They're very subtle. Using different weights of lines, also indicate different textures. Here I'm using a darker color and thicker lines because I want to show this petals are in the dark and in the back, they don't reflect so much light and I like the graphic soloed the lines. Now this one's ready and again I'm going to group it and rename it. In the next lesson we're going to create our last set of watercolor flowers.
13. Watercolor Style - Part 3: In this lesson, we're going to paint the last set of watercolor flowers. With the inker brush selected, I am going to choose whatever color and paint the petals that are in the back. Create another layer and choose another color. Here I'm drawing these parts. Then create another layer and find the petals in the front. The different layers creates separations, so it's easier later to add different shape and make some areas darker without getting into the outer area. Now I'm going to create another layer, another color, and draw their pistil. I keep saying this, but I'm not following my sketch exactly. I think you'll lose a lot of spontaneity and low if you're constrained by the sketch layer. So I like to use it just as a guide. Now another layer, another color. You could create all the layers in the same color. I'm just using different colors here, so you can easily understand what goes in what layer. These leaves should be on the back, so I'm going to go to the bottom layer, create a new one and drag it underneath because they're behind everything else. I'm going to go back into this layer and draw these so that the flowers look better. Now we're done with the base layer, and I'm going to go into each layer, activate the Alpha Lock and feel it with a light color. Now let's start from the back to the top, and it's the same process all over again. With this one, I want to create these cool textures here where the petals in the top change in a horizontal line. They also have these cool thick veins, so I'll have that in mind as I paint. It's always the same thing, darker colors and shadows where the petals meat. Again, this doesn't have to be the way you paint, this is the way I paint. Let's create the cool red orange tops here maybe add a darker red. Then the next layer, and I'm going to go back to the yellow. I want this to be darker because these would be under these other petals, so it would be casting shadow. Then these petals, I'm trying to leave the top of the petals very light, so they're different from the petals in the back. I'm not making the bottom so dark that they merge with the layer we just painted before this one. You want to create differences between all the layers. I'm going to choose this brush in a lighter color and make those lighter areas lighter. Then go back to this brush and choose the red and I'll start painting the tips of the petals. Now the pistil, see they're red in the bottom and yellow in the top, but I want them to show against the yellow flowers. I'm going to make these area very dark, and paint the tips of these with a darker yellow. I'm not painting them too much. Finally, the last leaves. I'm going to paint that with different shades of green. Let's create another layer and with the inker brush add the details. With a red, I'm going to create the spots on my flower. The reference flower zone have these spots, but since you're the artist, you can do whatever you want and add whatever you want. I'm going to add these veins into flowers, they're darker, but I think they will look better lighter. Again, I can do whatever I want. We're done. Now I'm going to turn on my sketch layer and group these ones, rename the group. I'm going to create a new layer to paint some of the leaves. I'm creating a lot of dark tons in here because everything else is quite light. Adding some dark areas gives the illustration more contrast. Now I'm going to add a new layer and with the inker brush add a bit of details, but not too many. We're done with this watercolor part, so let's group these and rename this group. Drag the leaves group through the bottom because I want them to be in the back of everything. We're done with this part. In the next lesson, we're going to draw some inked style flowers to complete our bouquet.
14. FInal Touches: Inked Style: In this lesson, we are going to add our final touches with an Inked style. I'm going to reduce the opacity of my sketch layer again and I'm going to create a new layer and drag it underneath everything. I have my ink brush selected and I'm going to choose this purple color. I'm just going to ink the rest of the areas, just like we did in the previous lessons. I like mixing the inked areas and the watercolor style areas. I think it gives it a modern look but you can definitely create everything in inked style or everything in watercolor style or however you want. I'm following my sketch but perfecting the shape. Adding a bit more detail, maybe some more folds. I'm going to speed this up because by now you know what we're doing. I'm going to go into the leaves and flatten this group because I want to erase the parts that overlap here. I want them to be under the inked layers. If It's hard to see what you're doing, you can reduce the opacity of it and that way it's easier to erase the areas that are covering the ink. Now, I can go back and make the opacity 100 percent again and go back to my inked layer. I'm actually going to name it, so I know where it is. I'm going to continue inking my flower. I'll turn the sketch back on and create these filler leaves. I'm not thinking too much about it, I'm just creating random spot everywhere. Either I'm not actually following my sketch perfectly, just use the sketch as a guide. Now that I have the basic shapes in, I can start adding the details and the shading. I'll speed this part up because again, it's just adding lines and shadows. Remember to experiment with different styles and techniques and mix different kind of flowers. Most of mine here are front view flowers but that's because my style is like that and I really like front view items and characters and everything, but try to experiment with side view and different kinds of angles and different compensations. The only way you can develop a style is by trying a lot of things and seeing what feels more comfortable for you and what do you have more fun doing. Go ahead and try these in pen and paper, with paints, with whatever material you want. You can apply all these techniques to all different types of art materials, not just procreate. For the final touch, we will add a watercolor texture. I'm using the Hot Press Brush. You can download it for free when you sign up for my newsletter or you can use any other type of watercolor texture you have. I'm going to select these grayish color for my first layer, go to the top of my stack, create a new layer, press the end, set it to linear burn and then select my brush and cover the whole canvas without lifting my pencil. I will do this two times. The texture is very subtle so you can't probably see it yet. Then, I'm going to choose a yellowish color and paint over my canvas again. Then, I'm going to do it one more time with this grayish color again. I'm just painting over the canvas without lifting the pencil. Here, you can see the texture a bit more, if I turn it off and turn it on. It just gives it a more realistic look and I like creating it with different colors so it creates more depth. Now, our flower bouquet is ready. We can share it and save it. In the next lesson, we're going to wrap this up.
15. Conclusions: We've come to the end of the class, and I hope you had a lot of fun and that you learned a lot. Knowing how to create your own flowers will be super useful for graphic design, for creating web banners, for making your own patterns and illustrations, and maybe you can even start your own line of stationary, who knows? Now you know how to study flowers to determine their basic shapes, and how to create the ugly sketch phase and then make it prettier, and even create digital watercolors. Remember to share your projects in the class gallery, and follow me here on Skillshare so you can see all my other classes, and follow me also on Instagram, I'm @sandrabowersart, and tag me if you post any of your illustrations. See you in the next class. Bye.
Sandra Mejia, Illustrator + Pattern Designer
