Mastering Affinity Designer V2 on the iPad: A Beginners Guide for Illustration and Graphic Design

1. Mastering Affinity Designer V2 on the iPad: Hi. I'm Priscilla, an Illustrator, surface Patent designer, educator, and owner of Cardwell and Inc, a design studio based in Australia. I'm so excited to welcome you to my course, Mastering Affinity Designer version two on the iPad. A beginners guide for Illustration and Graphic Design. Whether you're an illustrator looking to elevate your designs a creative, seeking a powerful alternative to subscription based apps, or someone new to vector art. This course is for you. I know how daunting it can be to switch from a pixel based workflow to learning a vector program with a new interface. It can feel like you're starting from scratch. But don't worry, I've got you covered. In this course, I'll guide you step by step to confidently muster Affinity Designer version two on the iPad. So you might ask why learn vector art. Vector illustrations are a game changer. They're used everywhere from logos and branding to patterns for apparel, home decor, and digital ads. The best part is that vectors are infinitely scalable, so you can resize and recolor your designs without losing any resolution or quality. Industries like graphic design, fashion, advertising, and app design depend on vector graphics. Mastering these skills will give you a competitive edge, making vector art a valuable addition to your toolkit. In this class, we'll dive into two projects to help you build your skills. First, our flat style coffee cup illustration to master the basics, and then a three D plant based art print, where we'll explore adding depth and dimension. Along the way, you'll learn how to navigate the interface with Ease, essential tools like the pen pencil gradient in text tools, and features like layer color studios, and effects to give your designs a professional finish. I'll finish up with showing you how to export your artwork in the correct format for print or digital use. To make things even easier, I've included sketches and color palettes for both of your class projects, so you can follow along seamlessly. All you will need for this class is your iPad, a stylus, and the Affinity Designer version two app. If you are ready to dive into vector art and unlock a new level of creative freedom, join me in class, and we'll get started in the next lesson by accessing your class resources. 2. Class Resources: Before you start on the lessons and the class projects, be sure to download the provided resources from the resource section in the web version, not the mobile app. These resources include color palettes and sketches to help you follow along with ease. Download them into your file storage, and once downloaded, you can import them into affinity designer as we progress through the course. Now for that class project, your project for this class is simple. Create a vector illustration and then share a screenshot of this. You can do it at any time during the course and upload it to our project section. It could be the designs we work on together, or you can come up with something completely original. Sharing a project isn't just about showing off your work. It's a great way to inspire other artists to try these techniques too. All right, enough, talking, let's get started. Met me in the next lesson where we'll walk through the gallery and the interface of Affinity Designer version two. 3. Gallery & App Settings: In this lesson, we are going to be looking at the basics of the gallery interface of Affinity Designer version two. The purchased app shows up on your iPad as a blue icon, and tapping opens the gallery view. On the left hand side of the interface, you have your affinity icon, and tapping opens options to close all documents. Check for updates, which will take you to the App store to see if there are any updates or special offers and show you examples of artwork and applications of the app in industry. From this view, tapping on the Affinity Designer text on the top left hand side, will take you back to your apps gallery. Next, import content will allow you to import any documents you want that are in Affinity Designer formats, and About we'll give you information on the app. Next on the list, we have our live Doc tab, and these are the documents that you are currently working on. These working documents are like tabs in a web browser. They are only able to be used while they are open, and they do not automatically save. If you close without saving, you will lose your document, so it's important to save as you work. To save the document, tap the three lines in the title tab, which allows you to rename your file, save as and choose a file location for your file, or just save to update a previously saved version at its current location. The next tab is the new document tab. You'll notice that you have a little gray triangle at the bottom right, which indicates you have more options available to you. Here, the options are new document, new from clipboard, new from a template, which is a document that you've set up as a starting point to use over and over or a new project. New project is a folder in your gallery where you can put similar themed documents together. You create a project folder by long pressing on a document until it starts to shake and then dragging and dropping it on top of another document in the gallery, which then creates a project folder manually. To undo this, you can tap on the three lines in the document and select to move it out of the project. You can also use the three lines on a project folder to rename it. The next tab is the Open tab to open existing documents, import documents, or create a new document from a photo on your device. The template tab allows you to open your file location and open an existing template. The lessons tab opens a few video lessons and pre made illustrations that have been submitted to affinity by artists, and you can view them to study their process and how they created certain effects. You will need to download them to your device to use them, so make sure you have storage available. Next, you have your Help tab. First, you have your help section that allows you to access a handbook built into the app. This will give you information on any tool in affinity designer that you want to use. The categories can be opened into more specific subcategories. You can also exit this section by tapping the x at the top right. The earning portal, Quick Start Guide, and what's new on iPad are equally useful full color tutorials and guides, that will open up in the Affinity website. At the bottom of the gallery, you have your account information and your settings for the app. The settings tab opens your preferences for how you can use the interface. Most of the settings, I leave with the defaults, but there are a few that I'm going to highlight, which will simplify your workflow as you design. In general, I have activated show touches so that you can see the blue circles on the screen when I am showing you touch gestures. In user interface, you can adjust the level of gray in your background. If you are left handed, you have the option of turning on left handed mode, which will flip the tools on the document interface so that the tools are on the right hand side and the studios on the left. I leave mine right handed. I activate the show status bar option, and this will show a status bar on the bottom of your document so that as you select a tool, it'll give you a brief overview of how to use it or any shortcuts you can use with the command controller. I'll go into this in our lesson on gestures. I also want to highlight that although there are gestures for undo with a two finger tap on your screen and redo with a three finger tap on your screen, you can also show the buttons on the document interface, which do not appear by default by activating them here. Finally, in this menu, I activate, ask for a name when creating layers or tools, and this will be incredibly useful in organizing your layers as it will automatically pop up a text box to enter a group name whenever you group objects, and this will save you several steps and valuable time in your workflow so that you do not have to manually select a layer, then select rename from a menu, then get the pop up box, and then rename it. It's such a great time saver. I generally leave the color preferences tab as is, but here is where you can adjust your RGB and CMYK color preferences when you are creating files for clients. Under the tools tab, I like to activate synchronize tools between documents. If I'm using tools with specific settings in one document, it carries across to any other documents in the app. I also turn on allow Canvas rotation in all tools so I can rotate my Canvas as I create. For the pencil settings, if you are using the second generation Apple pencil, you can adjust what you want your double tap feature to do, as well as the pressure curve for the pencil. I leave mine alternating between the move and no tool, which is the default setting. The Fonts tab allows you to import any fonts you have on your file storage into your app for use. The shortcuts menu gives you a range of shortcuts you can use if you have a keyboard or command controller activated. Linked services allows you to link your file storage if you choose, and the reset tab resets your preferences to your factory defaults. Okay. That's it for our gallery view and preferences. Join me in the next lesson to set up our document and get an overview of the tools on the interface. 4. Creating a New Document : In this lesson, we are going to create a new document in Affinity Designer and get an overview of the document interface. In the side menu in our gallery, select new document. A new menu will appear, which will give you options for pre made templates on the left hand side that have common dimensions for print and media. On the right hand side, you can set your own dimensions for a document. For ours, I'm first going to set the document units to pixels and then set the size by tapping the numbers to activate the grid. We're going to make our dimensions 1080 by 1080 pixels and 300 DPI, which is the default for print ready applications. You can set your color format on the right hand side and toggle on whether you would like your artboard to have a transparent background or not. This can also be done later in your document. Then select to create a new document. Remember that because we are working with vectors, it doesn't matter if we have a slightly smaller canvas size because they are infinitely scalable. When your document opens, you'll see a range of tools and studios available to you. At the top, there are a few menus that are static and used regardless of the tools that you are using in affinity. The rest of the top panel is a contextual menu that directly relates to the tools found on the left hand side of the interface. Depending on which tool you select on the left, you'll see the menu at the top change to give you more options while you use that tool. On the right, you have the studios where you'll find tools common to digital drawing programs. Each of these will open to give you more specific options for their use. As soon as you click off the studio, they will collapse. But if you are working in a studio and want to keep it open, you can use the pushpin icon to dock it to the side of the interface. Once you've done this, it will keep any studio you are using open until you deactivate this setting. At the bottom on the right is a useful tool. If you tap on the question mark icon, it will bring up all your menu labels for every icon visible on the interface. The tool labels are on the left. The studios are on the right. The labels for the top of the interface, however, will appear in the center of the screen with the menus that are static and do not change on the left at the top of the column. The static menus on the right come next in the column, and the contextual menu that does change with the tool will be at the bottom of this column. At the bottom right hand side, the undo and redo arrows are located, and we activated these in our settings, so now they are visible. That's it for this lesson. Join me in the next lesson to get a quick introduction to our menus and learn about quick menus and gestures in the document interface that will simplify your workflow as you design. 5. Global and Quick Menus : In this lesson, I'm going to cover a quick introduction to the menus, quick menus, and gestures. I'm first going to start with the menus on the interface that are static and do not change regardless of the tool being used. The first icon on the top left takes you back to your gallery view where we started in the app. Next to that is your affinity designer icon, which indicates that you are in the vector persona of the app using only vector based tools. We will be staying in this persona throughout this lesson. But tapping on the icon will show you that you also have a pixel persona with an entire interface of pixel or Rasta based tools, like you would have available in a program like Procreate. This is one of the fantastic features of this app. It allows you to use both vector and pixel based tools in the same document in one app. There is also an entire persona dedicated to exporting your images in sections called the export persona with its own dedicated tools. However, for this class, we will head back to the blue icon because we will be using only vector tools. Next to that, we have the three line icon, which opens the menu to access the common tools to make adjustments to your Canvas or document. Here, you can resize and export your document and templates, print, place a photo or a file into your document, create new artboards, change or clip your Canvas. You can make your Canvas transparent for P and G files. You can activate and deactivate your command controller and various other document based options. I will be showing you a few gestures and shortcuts that use the command controller, so I'm going to activate it in this menu. When you tap to activate it, a circle is going to appear on your screen. Tapping it will show you the full interface in a light gray color. The command controller is a touch menu to give you access to shortcuts on the iPad. It hovers inactive on your screen, but as soon as you tap it and drag from the center button across one of the modifier keys, they turn blue to show they are active as you hold a finger on them. If you want the key for an extended period of time as you design, swipe from the center, pass the modifier key, and it will lock in place without being held. You can also repeat this swipe action, past the modifier key to disable the lock function. You can also long press on the center of the command controller to move it anywhere on the interface as you design. Just a reminder that if you get stuck, details on how to use this can be found in the help section, in the user interface and command controller. This will give you details on how to use your quantifiers. In our settings, we also activated the status bar at the bottom of our interface so that when you are using tools that could use the command controller, the status bar will give you hints as to how to do this more effectively. The next three dot icon at the top of the interface will open a menu that holds your frequently used functions, like cut, paste, duplicate, your insertion operations, operations like converting to curves and expanding strokes, as well as your fil modes. This is a great time to introduce the quick menu, where you can also find some of these frequently used functions at your fingertips using a touch gesture. A three finger swipe down on your screen will reveal your quick menu. You can also do this by double tapping on your command controller or just long pressing on your screen with a finger. Quick menu is very useful and we will be using it to shortcut some of our functions as we create our projects. Protip here, as you become more familiar with vector art, you may want certain commands in your Quick menu that differ from the defaults that are found there. I'm here to give you some great news. Holding any of the active keys down will reveal more options that you can replace the existing function with. Also, if you want to restore the defaults, you can select that from the menu as well. Tapping on your screen outside of the quick menu will disable it. The static tools on the top right start with the Zoom to fit, magnifying glass. It has a little gray triangle on the bottom, which gives you a menu with more options. It allows you to adjust your Zoom to your preference. A single tap on this icon will fit your document to the screen from whatever zoomed in view you had. I just want to highlight here that the navigator studio on the bottom right allows you to zoom in and out by tapping the options available. Or simply by placing a stylus or finger on the icon and swiping up and down without lifting. You can also zoom in with two fingers spread apart on the canvas or zoom out by pinching two fingers together. You can also rotate the Canvas this way. To restore a rotation to zero, just head back to your navigator studio and double tap on the rotation numbers to reset it. The next icon is the Toggle preview mode. The options next to it expand to reveal design aids and options like your grids, bleeds, column guides, and rulers. I'll just activate the grids here to show you how this works. You can now see the grid on the Canvas, but if I press the toggle preview, you can see what your document looks like without the grid easily. I'll just disable the grids again. Next to that is a magnet icon, which is the snapping tool with additional options if you tap the small gray triangle. Finally, you can hide your interface altogether with the square icon on the right hand side. On the bottom of the interface, there is a little x which allows you to deselect an object that you have selected. You can also deselect by clicking on any empty area of the Canvas around your artboard. The trash icon on the bottom left also allows you to delete a selected node or object. For our last gesture, tap two fingers on the screen to undo and tapping three fingers to redo an action. You can alternatively use those arrows on the bottom right of the interface. That is it for this lesson. Join me in the next lesson to set up our document for our first project. 6. The Colour and Stroke Studio : In this lesson, we are going to set up for our class project and learn how to use the color studio in Affinity Designer. We're going to begin with importing our sketch for Part one. Head up to the top menu with the three lines, and in the menu, select place. In the pop up menu, select files and navigate to the file storage where you saved your class resources for the TC sketch, select it and choose pen. Use your finger or stylus to tap and drag your image onto the artboard. At the top right, if your snapping magnet is not activated, activate it, and this will allow you to center the sketch on your screen. Next, head to the layer in our layer studio on the right. And we're going to locate our sketch image layer. Tap on the layer and swipe to the left and select lock to lock the layer to make sure that it doesn't move as we work. Now we're going to create a vector layer to build our illustration. Head to the menu at the top of the layers panel to the plus icon and select vector layer. Because we activated this in the settings, a pop up box will appear for us to name this layer automatically, and we're going to name it tcp. Then in the layer studio, tap this layer until it's blue and hold and drag it just below our sketch layer. We can now tap the circle on the right of our sketch layer to deactivate it until we are ready to start. Now that we are set up, I'm going to give you a brief overview of working with line and color. In Vector design, unlike in pixel or aster art, you create your linework and your colors simultaneously, and you also build your designs starting with basic shapes. On the left of the interface, I'm going to select the shape tool with a rectangle icon and drag on my artboard with my stylus to draw out the shape to show you how this works. The nodes or the little circles around the shape will show you that it is selected. If you have tapped off the shape at any point, you'll see no nodes, and you may need to go to the move tool at the top left of the interface, and then tap the rectangle again to make sure your selection is active. Now we can head to the top right to the color studio with a circle icon. Tap to open and tap the push pin at the top to keep it open as we go through the options. There are two icons on the top left. The hollow ring is the stroke or outline of your shape, and the filled circle represents the color within the shape. The icon that is on top is always the one that is active and linked to your color wheel below. You can tap either the fill or the stroke to bring it forward to activate it. You can select colors by selecting the color family from the outer circle of the color wheel and then selecting a specific color from the inner shape. Another great touch gesture here is that you can adjust the color of an object by long pressing the studio circle icon with a finger or stylus and swiping up and down. You can also adjust the stroke width using the stroke icon below it by long pressing and using the same up and down gesture. Can also alternate the color of the stroke and fill with a touch gesture swiping across from the left to the right on the icons. You can also remove either the fill or the stroke in an object by swiping up on the icon when it's active until it turns white with a blue line through it. Selecting a color from your color wheel will restore it. To the right of the fill and stroke icons is the color picker tool. This allows you to select a color from the canvas by long pressing and dragging the circle shape that appears to the color of your choice. This temporarily loads the color into a circle directly to the right of it, and when you tap on the loaded color, it then replaces the color in your shape that is active. This is a good time to mention the dedicated color picker tool on the left hand side, which is essentially the same function. However, this will not load the color first, it will just immediately change the color of the fill or stroke that is active without that pre load function. I'll head back to the move tool to make sure our shape is selected again and we'll look at our other color studio options. The color wheel is not the only way that you can select colors. You can use the arrows on the side of the text to see other view options or tap on the text to open the full menu to scroll through. All the numbers can be tapped to reveal number and letter panels for precise inputs. Underneath the color pickers, you have an opacity slider and scrolling this allows you to adjust the opacity of a fill or stroke in an object. A noise slider, so you can add a bit more texture to your vector shapes. Underneath that are your recently used colors and your quick colors that you can tap to select. Finally, at the bottom of this panel is the text that says swatches. Tapping the arrow to the right reveals a new panel, which holds your built in pantone palettes that come with the app and any others that you have created. The grid icon allows you to change the view of your swatches. So, let's create a limited palette from our sketch layer to see how this works. In your layers panel, reactivate our sketch layer by tapping the circle on the right, and at the top of the Swatches panel, tap the three line menu to get your options when creating a palette. A document palette limits its use to this document only, and an application palette will be available in the Swatches panel on any document in the app. Let's select application palette, and in the pop up menu, name it T. At the top of the panel, make sure your fill is active, and then we are going to use our color picker tool on the left to create our swatch. Activate it and then tap your first color on the sketch layer, and your fill color in your color studio will change. Then tap the three line menu and select Add current fill two palette, and you will see it added to the Swatch palette. Next, tap the second color and repeat tapping the menu and adding current fill to palette. We are going to keep going with this until all colors from our sketch layer are loaded into our swatch. One thing to remember, once a swatch is complete, if you want to save it, you can tap the same three line menu and select export palette to save it to your file storage, to use on other devices. While we are here, we're also going to learn to import a palette. Hopefully, you have saved the palette from your class resources that we will use in Part two to your files. From our swatch menu, select import palette, and then we're going to choose as application palette. Navigate to where you saved your plants palette in your files and import it, and it's that simple. You can now see it in your list, and I'll now head back to our layers panel and deactivate our sketch layer by tapping the circle on the right, and tapping to activate our vector rectangle layer until it is blue. With the move tool, you can now select your rectangle shape. Aside from the color studio, just below it, affinity designer has a whole studio dedicated to stroke adjustments. Tap on the stroke icon to open it. We've already seen how you can use the sliding gesture on the panel icon to change your stroke width, but you can also do this with the slider in the panel as well. A third option is to put a numerical value input for a more precise stroke size and tap ok to collapse it. Appearance of the stroke can also be changed here from line to dash line or brush, where you can select any of your textured brushes in your brush studio that is located beneath the layer studio, and this will apply it to your vector curve. I'll head back to the stroke studio and select the plan line for now. You can also adjust the edges of your stroke cap, the join and the alignment. But for now, we'll leave them on the defaults. The last part of the studio is the pressure curve, but we will come back to that as we use it in our class project. We can tap on our rectangle in our vector layer and then long press on our screen and select delete from our quick menu to delete it. Finally, reactivate our sketch layer by tapping the circle to make it visible and making sure the layer is active in blue. At the top of the layers panel, we can tap the numbers to set our opacity at 25% using the number grid, and on the right, make adjustments to the blend mode of the layer. Tap the text and scroll until you find the multiply blend mode. That's all for this lesson. Join me in the next lesson to build our vector illustration as we learn to use the shape tool, the move tool, and the shape builder. 7. Project 1: The Shape, Move and Builder Tools: In this lesson, we are going to begin creating our vector illustration while learning to use the Shape tool, the move tool, the no tool, and the Shape Builder tool, which is new to Affinity Designer version two. In our layer studio, select the vector layer until it is blue to show it's active, and then we can tap our pushpin to collapse the studio and get started. In our swatches panel, select our T palette, and we're going to set our fill color as the medium Beige brown. Because we are creating a flat illustration of block colors, tap and swipe on your stroke to disable it, and then tap the fill so that it is active on top. To begin our cup shape of our vector illustration, we're going to use our shape tool. This time, when you select it, tap the gray triangle at the bottom right to reveal all our shape options. Select the segment shape from the list and then place your stylus or finger on the screen and drag out your shape until it's approximately the size of the t cup in our sketch and release it. It will be upside down, but we will fix this in a moment. With any vector shape we create, once we lift our stylus, we can still adjust the shape in a few ways, while our shape tool is still active. Provided we only use the nodes or the circular points that are visible. The handle on the shape will allow us to rotate the shape so that it looks more like the body of a coffee cup. Placing one finger on the screen will allow you to do this in precise 15 degree increments. You can also use the nodes on the corners to resize and one finger on your screen will maintain the aspect ratio as you do this so that the shape does not distort. Alternatively, you can use your command controller by tapping to activate and then swiping up to lock the arrow modifier key to maintain the aspect ratio without having to touch your screen. Okay, I'll just deactivate that. You can also adjust the red nodes on any shape that has them to modify its geometry. In this case, we can adjust and flatten the top or the bottom of our mug. Any other actions though outside of this will just create a new shape because our shape tool is still active. I'll use the two finger gesture to undo this new shape. To select and move the shape generally, you'll need a combination of the no tool and the move tool to reposition and adjust the shape. You can use the move tool to make sure the shape is positioned on top of the sketch and then tap on the no tool just below it. If you have an Apple pencil to, the double tap gesture will allow you to swap between the node and move tool instead of having to tap the menu. I'm going to use the node tool to move the shape around until it is positioned over our sketch. Can still adjust the top and bottom and the sides as you could when you were using the shape tool. But this just gives you more flexibility without creating any new shapes by accident. Once you are happy with the position of your shape, we can continue to create our handle of the mug. Head back to the shape tool, and this time, we are going to select the doughnut tool. I'll tap and then draw out my shape. And use one finger to maintain that aspect ratio. Then I'm going to use the move and the no tool to position and adjust the shape so that it fits on top of our handle sketch. While the move tool is active, the contextual menu at the top gives more options for our selection and the way that we position our shapes. Here, you can move, auto select, arrange, transform, alter alignment, or access bully in operations for shape geometry. In this case, I would like to place my donut shape underneath the body of the mug. I'll select the arrange option and select move to back from the drop down menu. Now I want to combine these two shapes so that we have a single shape for our cup. Before we can do this, we need to have both shape selected and we can do this by using our Move tool to draw a rectangular marquee around both shapes until they have a blue outline. Now we can use a new tool, the Shape Builder tool, which is exclusive to version two of Affinity Designer. If you have version one, you can still work around this using the Boolean operations in the Move tool contextual menu where you can select and add shapes together. Our shape builder tool is found on the left and has an icon with green overlapping shapes. Tap to activate it, and the contextual menu at the top, will change to give you more options. Here you can add the shapes together to make a new shape using the plus icon, delete sections of the combined shapes by using the minus icon or create a whole new shape that combines the two, but still leaving the initial shapes intact. I'm going to activate the plus sign because I want to add the two together. Next, you need to select the option you want to use to make your selections of the parts you want to combine. I'm going to select the free hand line for more flexibility. Now we can draw lines over all the areas we want to merge to connect the shapes into one. Once you are done, deselect all our shapes using the x at the bottom left. All right. Next, we're going to make a shadow and highlight on our T cup. We'll start with the shadow. In the color studio on the right, tap to select the fill and select our dark shadow color from our palette. Then activate our move tool and select the T cup. In the three dot menu at the top of the interface on the left, we're going to find a section called insertion targets to choose where we want the new shape to be placed. I'm going to choose inside because I want the shadow nested inside the cup shape and not on top of it. Once it is active, we can go to our shape tool and select the crescent shape and then place our stylus on the screen to draw it out fairly large, and you can see how it is nested within our T cup. Now we can use the node tool and adjust the handle to rotate it. You can always go back and forth between the node and move tool to make adjustments to its position until the shadow covers the handle and the right side of the cup. That is our shadow completed. Our layer studio on the right, we can see that the crescent is in a child layer within the cup shape. At any time, you can always drag a shape out of another by long pressing and moving the child layer out of its parent shape, and you can also place it back into the parent layer without using insertion targets by dragging it back down, but to the right of the layer. If you just drag down, it will place it below the layer, which is not what we want. At the bottom left, deselect the shape with our x. In our color studio on the right, we're going to select our fill and the Beige highlight color from our swatches. I'm going to use the move tool to select the T cup again, and in the top menu, select the insertion as being inside. Now I can activate my shape tool again and draw out a new crescent. With the move tool, rotate and place it on the other side of our T cup on the left and thin it out, and then we can adjust our shape using the no tool until it sits on top of the highlight in our sketch layer. I want to manipulate the shape a bit more, so I'm going to long press on my screen and activate my quick menu and select convert two curves. This is going to turn our rigid shape into a movable vector curve that we can manipulate more easily using the node tool. The node tool also allows you to select the shape and convert one or several nodes from sharp nodes to smooth. Or smart nodes using that contextual menu. You can also use it to add nodes to a shape to be able to have more flexibility and adjust a shape by moving the lines between the nodes. You can also delete a node by tapping and hitting the trash can once it is blue. Okay, that's it for this lesson. Join me in the next lesson to learn to use the pencil tool and the pressure curve in the stroke studio to create the steam in our cup. 8. The Pencil and Node Tool : In this lesson, we are going to use the pencil tool, the pressure curve, and the stroke width tool to create the steam coming out of our teacup. I'm going to deselect with the x at the bottom left, and then on the right in our color studio, swipe up to remove your fill color. Then tap to activate the stroke and select the black color from our color palette. On the left hand side in our tools, we can now select a new tool, which is the pencil tool. The pencil tool allows you to create vector lines and shapes organically as though you were using a line brush that you find in most digital drawing apps. Tap it to activate, and then draw out a line on your artboard. The first thing you may notice is that the line may be a bit wobbly and the stroke may not be as thick or thin as you want it to be. To fix this, you need to adjust your width and stabilization for the pencil tool. While it is active, you'll see two sliders that have appeared on the left hand side. The bottom slider allows you to adjust the stroke width easily, and the other slider affects the degree of stabilization or smoothing out of the stroke as you draw. In the contextual menu at the top. You can also choose the type of stabilization that you want to use. The options are window stabilizer, rope stabilizer, or no stabilizer. I'll start with the rope stabilizer. When this is active, when you draw a line, there'll be a little rope that will give you a delay while your line gets smoothed out. It gives you a bit more control over the line depending on the number you select from the slider. I'll just draw a line at a low setting. And then at a high setting to show you the difference. You can also create sharp corners or sharp nodes using the rope stabilizer if you move it at angles. The window stabilizer, on the other hand, will allow you to smooth your lines as you draw a little bit more easily, but doesn't give you those sharp nodes when you make a sudden turn. The nodes are all smooth nodes. Generally, if you draw a line with the pencil tool and then take your stylus off the screen and come back to the line to continue it, it will just create a new curve. You can see that in your layers panel as it will create a new layer. The sculpt tool in the contextual menu for the pencil tool can be used to remedy this. Tapping it activates it, and then if you have lifted your stylus off your screen, all you need to do is tap on the end node to continue your stroke. The sculpt tool also allows you to alter a line and re draw it between any two points on the line. I'm going to undo the sculpt. Next to that, you have your stroke color in the contextual menu, and you can tap on it to reveal the full color wheel or the swatches panel to select colors that you may be using. Next to that, you have a paint bucket that is going to allow you to reveal your fill color. That isn't normally shown on the interface. Then you can do the same thing with selecting your colors. At the moment, we haven't created our strokes with a fill, so it does look a bit strange with that open curve. This is just to show you that you can add a fill to any stroke that you've created at any point. But for now, I'm going to tap on the white circle with the blue line to remove our fill. The ride of this is our auto close function, and you'll notice that at present, we have created open strokes or curves. If you are trying to make a curve that is closed, activate this auto close by tapping. Then as you draw your stroke out, you'll see a red dot appear at the beginning and at the end of that stroke. When they connect, it will create a closed shape. I'll show you the difference. If you do not have the auto close function on, you can still draw the shape, but you'll notice that the nodes don't meet each other. You zoom in, you'll see you actually need to tap the no tool and then pull the end node to cover the start node until it turns yellow so that you know that the shape is closed. The auto close function is a really useful function to know. Next to this, you have the options of how you can adjust your pencil properties, either by the brush defaults, automatic pressure or velocity. For now, I'll leave it on automatic. I'm just going to use my move tool to select all these curves in a rectangular marquee. Then use the trash can to delete them at the same time at the bottom left. We're going to wrap up our lesson by creating our steam for Tp while we look at a few other functions. Make sure all the shapes are de selected using the x, and then we can reactivate our pencil tool. I'm also making sure my rope stabilizer is about 28 and drawing out a line over our steam sketch. Next, we can activate the nod tool and we're going to use this to adjust and move around the nodes and lines. The Node tool will allow you to add more nodes for flexibility if you choose or adjust the lines to manipulate the shape a bit more. Can also tap on a node and adjust the handles to change the angle and direction of the lines they are attached to. Finally, you can also tap on a node and change it from a smooth node to a sharp node or a smart node using the contextual menu. But for now, I will just undo that with a two finger tap. The stroke we have drawn is uniform and not very tapered. We're going to head back to our stroke studio on the right and specifically look at our pressure curve to make it look more like steam. As you move the line of the pressure curve down, you can see that the taper of the stroke will also adjust as well. You can tap the line to add an extra node in the center and while it's still active in blue, you can move it to manipulate the shape of that curve. If I tap again, I can add another node and continue to mess with the shape of our curve. But you can also delete a node by long pressing it and selecting delete node, or you also have the option to reset the whole line as well. This is important because affinity designer will remember your stroke pressure curve and apply it to all your strokes after this. If you ever find that you draw a new stroke and it's still showing that pressure curve from a previous stroke, this is the area that you need to change. We're going to continue with our node on the other end of the pressure curve and bring it down to the bottom to taper the other side of the stroke. Now, I would prefer my steam to have a bit more width in the center, so we can use a new tool to affinity designer version two, which is our stroke width tool. It has an orange icon in the tools on the left, and when you tap to activate it, you will see handles appear that cut across the stroke that is active and can be adjusted to widen the center of that stroke. You can add more nodes at any point that you can thin out or widen at your discretion. If you open the stroke studio on the right hand side and keep it open, you can also see the effect of adding new points on the stroke in our pressure curve. I'll just undo those. Next, we're going to look at the duplicating functions in affinity designer as we create our other steam strokes. With our line selected with the move tool, there are several ways that we can duplicate this stroke, so we don't need to reinvent the wheel. The first is to place two fingers on the screen and then move the object with your stylus or finger to duplicate. This is my personal favorite. Alternatively, you can tap to activate your command controller and then drag down over the option key until it is blue and then use your stylus to move the shape and duplicate it. Dragging across again will deactivate this. You can also long press on your screen to activate duplicate or power duplicate. Power duplicate is different from the normal copy and paste duplicate function because it allows you to make changes to a duplicated shape that will be replicated the next time you duplicate. I'll show you how this works. With the second steam stroke, I'll use my move tool to adjust it and make it smaller before selecting duplicate from the quick menu. You'll see that this time the shape is not only duplicated, but also decreased in size in that same proportion. Finally, the last way you can use this power duplicate function is in the three dot menu at the top and that will also power duplicate for you. If you'd like to stop this power duplicate, you just need to deselect the shape before duplicating again. All right. I'm going to delete the extra shapes using the move tool and a rectangular marquee and then tapping the trash can. To finish up, I'm going to select and duplicate the initial stroke, resize it, and then with that two finger simple duplicate, create another copy for the other side and position it. That's all for this lesson. Join me in the next lesson to move forward with our Pen tool. 9. The Pen Tool : In this lesson, we are going to pause and look at the pen tool, which is one of the most used tools in vector illustration. Use the X to deselect any shapes and in our stroke studio, reset your pressure curve so that your lines are uniform. I'm also going to use my stroke slider to thin the line. To practice with this tool without affecting our illustration, I'm going to create a new artboard, which is another canvas within the same document. Head to the three line menu and then tap on the text that says artboards. And then draw out a new artboard next to our existing one and release. You will see this new artboard labeled artboard two in your layers panel. It is a new canvas and any shapes created on this canvas will show on your artboard in your layers panel. Just like a background layer in digital drawing apps, you can change the color of your artboards using the color studio as well. While it is active, you can head down to the transform studio at the bottom right, which gives you options to resize your artboard, so you can set the width dimensions and the height dimensions and tap k. I'll collapse a studio before we move on. Creating separate artboards within a document means that you can have palettes, sketches, and reference images available to you without affecting your main illustration. While we're on the topic of reference images, another great feature of Affinity Designer is that there is a built in stock image studio panel on the right with the photo icon. You open the panel, you can search for royalty free images on Pixabay or Pexels to use as reference images or objects to trace while you learn to use the pen and pencil tools. You agree to the terms of services that come up and then search for an item like coffee, then you can long press and drag the image to download it onto your artboard. I'm not going to download it for now. But we are going to move on to our Pen tool. On the left hand side of our studio, the pen tool icon looks like a fountain pen nib. Tap to activate it. Unlike the pencil tool that creates the lines as you draw them, the pen tool allows you to lay down each node or anchor point, and then a line will automatically connect node to node as you create. The lines and curves can be adjusted the same way that you did with the pencil tool using our move and node tools while the line is still active. Before I continue, I just want to say that whether it is a line or an enclosed shape vectors will be referred to as curves in a lot of digital drawing programs. You may hear me use that term during this lesson to mean either of those and in the affinity designer interface, in the menus or in your layers panel, you will see any vector shape referred to as curves. Let's reactivate our pen tool. In the contextual menu, pen mode is the default mode for this tool. Continue to tap your stylus or finger on the screen to place your nodes, and you'll see that by default, the nodes are sharp nodes. To end a line, you must double tap on the last red node until it changes color from a blue fill to white. Then you can start creating a new line or shape. You can create close shapes as well by double tapping on the first node that you laid down. You would like to create smooth nodes with your lines while in pen mode, you need to tap and drag without lifting your styles in the direction that you want the line to curve. If you want to return to creating sharp nodes after a smooth node, you can activate the command controller and snap it to the left, and then when you tap your screen, sharp nodes will be activated. I'll just deactivate that. At any point, you can switch to the node tool to adjust the Basie handles that appear on each node, adjust the line or move the nodes. The node tool still active, you can also use a rectangular marquee over several nodes at the same time and change the node type using the contextual menu from sharp to smart or smooth. If you switch back to the pen tool, if the last node has the blue fill, you can continue to extend that curve. The pen tool has a few gestures of its own if you're wanting to modify your lines without having to activate your node tool on the tool bar. You can activate your command controller to lock it on the right hand side, and then tap to adjust any active node or line. I'll just deactivate that. You can also hold down two fingers and lock the arrow modifier on the command controller at the top to drag a node around with its control handles locked. I'll just deactivate that. A three finger gesture on your screen will also allow you to edit the curves, although I can find it a bit touchy. I'll just deselect this shape with our x at the bottom left. If you are new to using the pen tool, it may be hard to get your head around where you place the next nodes as you become more familiar with this tool. I would suggest importing a sketch or image when you use this so that you can learn to follow the outlines. Another notable feature is that if you are using a second generation Apple pencil, you can tap the icon in the contextual menu to activate rubber band mode, which will show you a preview before you place your nodes, which can be very helpful as you learn. I'll just use the move tool to select these lines that we've made and delete them. There are a few other modes for your pen tool available to you in the contextual menu. Smart mode allows you to place smart nodes to create smooth flowing lines instead of angled lines. Next, you have polygon, which allows you to create straight lines with sharp nodes and end your shapes without having to double tap on that first node. Another great function when making closed shapes is that you can activate a mode called snap to nodes in the contextual menu. With this active, you can take shapes that are out of alignment into perfectly symmetrical shapes. With the polygon mode active, loosely create the nodes to form a four sided shape. I'm intentionally not being precise. Then we can make sure our snap to nodes is active and then change over to our node tool to align our nodes into a rectangle. You'll see them align in red if they are horizontally snapped together and green if they are vertically snapped together. Our next mode in the contextual menu is line mode, which stops your lines after two nodes are placed to make a straight line without having to double tap the node to deselect the line. Just like the pencil tool, with any of these modes, you can also adjust your stroke color or tap your paint bucket to reveal a fill color and adjust the fill color as well. You can always adjust their appearance after you create them using the stroke studio. I just want to touch on two other settings in the contextual menu before we finish. I'll place our mode back on pen mode for this. Then on the right, the first option is the preserve selection, and the second is add to curves. Preserve selection will make sure that the lines on the previous shape continue to stay active, even though they're not on the same layer in the layers panel. You can now use the Snap to nodes function to align the new shape with a previous shape, not just aligning the nodes in that curve. I'll just deactivate that setting. Next to it, when add two curves is active, as you create separate curves, all the curves are actually created within the same layer. You can see this if you open the layer studio. You can still adjust the colors and properties of these curves that are not connected simultaneously as well. This also has an additional benefit because you can use the move tool move all of the curves on the same layer at the same time. I'll deactivate this setting. Let's quickly use our move tool to select all of these shapes and delete them with our trash can at the bottom left. Then we're going to head back to our original artboard, and we're going to use our Pen tool to finish the T bag and details of our illustration. First, I'm going to activate the pen tool and place it in line mode. We're going to use the pen tool to create the line at the bottom of the TC, which is the pseudo shadow. And make sure that it is horizontally aligned. Next, we are going to create the line of our T bag, and then we are going to switch over to polygon mode and create the rectangle shape and make sure that our nodes aligned vertically and horizontally. You can also select a fill for your rectangle shape, and that's it for this lesson. Take some time to experiment with a penol until it feels more comfortable and then join me in the next lesson to learn about our layer studio and gestures as we complete our illustration. 10. The Layers Studio : In this lesson, we are going to look at how the Layer studio in Affinity designer works. The layer studio is found on the right hand side of the interface with an icon that looks like layered pages. Tapping the icon opens the panel that shows all the shapes and curves we have been working on as we have created our illustration. At the top of the studio, you have two layers of menus. The first icon of three rectangles allows you to compress your layers studio to picture thumbnails without the description to get more screen real estate. I'll just tap to reverse that. When the layers have their descriptions available, there are certain icons on the left that indicate what the layer contents are. They can be curves that are fully adjustable shape layers which still maintain their geometric restrictions and pixel layers or imported images where you will see a photo icon. The three lines next to it will give you your layer options to make layer adjustments, and the push pin we have seen before allows you to keep your studio open if you choose to as you were. In the next level of menus, the plus icon at the top allows you to create a new vector layer or pixel layer if you want to use pixels in your vector project with the pixel persona. Mask layers, empty mask layers, and empty groups are the next ones in this menu. The next icon allows you to merge layers down or merge selected layers. Just to note that although it may seem that these functions do not work in affinity designer, it's rather that to use these functions, you have to first convert your layers from vector to pixel layers by rasterizing and then you can merge them, which are options that are found further down in these menus. If you would like to keep your shapes as vectors to give you the option of adjusting the size and colors as you work, I would suggest grouping the layers or using the Boolean operations while the move tool is active to add the shapes together. You can also use the merge curves option in your three dot menu at the top of your interface to place two unconnected shapes on the same layer. If you have several shapes in a group in your layers, you can also expand or collapse the selection or collapse all parents to take your layers back to your artboard level. Merge Visible will combine any layers that are visible on either artboard into one new pixel base layer without affecting the original vector shapes and curves. Next to this, the folder icon allows you to group your objects into layers, which we have done in previous lessons or ungroup groups of objects. Below this, you have options to transform your layer contents using non destructive warp effects. I'll show you how this works with the mesh warp. Select one of your curves like the steam, and then in this menu, select mesh. This prompts you to name it. Once you press Okay, you can now alter the nodes of the mesh to adjust the shape. In the layers panel, you can see that the original layer is untouched. I'll just double tap to undo this feature. The trash icon allows you to delete a selected layer. The three dot menu next to it will give you a more detailed layer setting. Here you can adjust opacity. And locking or unlocking the active layer. I would like to draw your attention to solo mode in this panel. This removes all the other layers so that you can work on a layer on its own. Tapping again will bring back all the visible layers. You can also access this mode in your quick menu by long pressing and selecting solo or swiping down on your command controller to lock the option key and then heading back to the layers panel and tapping on a layer to isolate it. I'll just tap again on the layer to restore all layers and then swipe to disable the command controller. You can also adjust the opacity of a layer at the top of your layers panel by tapping to open the input grid or simply swiping up and down with a finger or stylus on the numbers to adjust the opacity. To restore 100% opacity, just double tap on the numbers. On the right, you can tap and scroll to select a new blend mode or use the arrows to scroll through. Double tapping on the text will also return the blend mode to normal. Moving down to the main layers view, when the move tool on the left is active, tapping on a layer activates this layer in blue and selects the object on your artboard. Swiping to the right will deactivate the selection. Swiping to the left on a layer will bring up a menu to allow you to add to an existing selection, delete a layer, lock it, or rename the layer. To select several layers, just keep swiping to the right on the layers you want to select and you can adjust their properties simultaneously. If the layers you want to select or group are all next to each other, tapping on the top layer with one finger, and then the bottom layer with two fingers will select them all. You can also use the command controller to do this by tapping to activate it, and then swiping up to lock the shift key and then tapping to select additional layers. I'll just deselect the command controller. Long pressing on a layer will allow you to move it up and down above or below other layers, and the blue line that appears will show you where the layer is being placed. You can also drag a layer and place it on top of another layer, but slightly to the right over the text to place a vector within another. We did this earlier with insertion targets, but you can also do this manually in the layers panel. I'll pause here to demonstrate by creating a heart shape on top of our T bag. Deselect all active layers with the X and then head to our color studio. Make sure your stroke is disabled by swiping up and then select our fill and in our swatches panel, the dusty rose color from our palette Tap on our rectangle layer in the layers panel because we want our new heart shape to be placed above it. Then select the shape tool and the heart shape in the list. Make sure your snapping is active and then draw out the heart shape. Now we can use our Node tool to position it in the center of that rectangle and then in the layers panel, select the heart shape and then drag it over into the right of our T bag rectangle label to place the heart within that shape. Now you can see that it is a child layer of this main rectangle. While we are here, we can create the circle shape around our teacup. Deselect the heart shape with the X and then in the color studio, select black for the stroke and no fill, and we will tap a layer this time near the bottom of our layers to place this shape and then head to our shape tool on the left and select ellipse. As you draw it out, place one finger on the screen to maintain the aspect ratio, and then we can use the move and no tool to position it over the sketch. I'm now going to deactivate our sketch layer to get a clear view of our final illustration and then group any loose curves like the steam and rearrange any layers that I feel are out of place. Now we can select all the layers of the illustration by tapping the first layer with one finger and the last layer with two fingers to collapse them all into one group. I'm going to call this group finished cup. And that is part one of our illustration done. I want to show you one final awesome feature if you happen to share your illustrations on social media and that is in the Navigator app in Affinity Designer at the bottom right. Now, this has a really interesting split view mode. Sometimes when you make an illustration, you want to remember the vector shapes you used or just have a cool before and after image for a social media post. By default, this mode is in none, but if you tap and adjust it to Xray or outline, you can then see your illustration broken into simple shapes. I really love this feature. That's it for this lesson and Project one of this course. I hope that it has been helpful in teaching you the basics of the app. Feel free to take a screenshot and add your project to the class project section of this class. You can always add Part two later. Play with colors and variations in your version and experiment with the techniques you have learned in Part one. I can't wait to see what you have created. Now on to part two of this class. In the next few lessons, we are going to create a three D style plant based outprint using the tools we've used in Part one, but also building on them with new tools in the interface to help take your vector illustrations from a flat style to a three dimensional style with volume, shadows, highlights, and text. We'll also look at assets and the export capabilities in Affinity Designer version two. I'll see you in class. 11. Project 2: Creating Flower Pot 1: Welcome to part two of the Affinity Designer course. Now that we have a comprehensive overview of the main tools in Affinity Designer. We can now try a more detailed project by creating a three D style pt. To get started, we're going to make sure is clear of any vector shapes and make sure that it has no fill or stroke. Then we can head to the three line menu at the top of our file storage to import our sketch for our second project. Select the text that says, place, select the file storage where you saved your class resources and select our plant sketch. Place your stylus onto the artboard and then drag to the size of the artboard and release it. Now we can resize and if snapping is activated on the top right, we can center it on our artboard. This is the image we're now going to build our illustration on. He over to the layers panel and find your image on P two, swipe to the left, and lock this layer so that the image doesn't move as we create our design. At the top of the layers panel, select the plus icon and create a new vector layer. We're going to hold and drag it below our sketch layer. Then activate our sketch layer by tapping and reduce the opacity at the top. I'm going to select about 25%. You can set it at whatever level you feel comfortable with. Next, set the blend mode to multiply, and now we can see the outlines as a guide as we build our vector shapes. Make sure all the layers are deselected using the x at the bottom left, and then in our color studio, head to your swatches at the bottom and select our color palette for our art print that we imported in one of our earlier lessons. Now we can make a start by creating our first flower pot. Select the darker terra cotta orange color for your fill and disabled a stroke. And then select the shape tool on the left tool bar and the rectangle shape. We're going to use this to draw out a rectangle that is approximately the width and height of that first flowerpot sketch. Use the node and the move tool to position it approximately on top of the sketch layer. This shape has sharp corners compared to the rounded corners of our sketch. To rectify this, we are going to use a new tool in our tool bar, the corner tool. Tap to activate it on the left, and then draw out a rectangular marquee to select the two nodes at the bottom of the flower pot that we want to round. Once they are selected, the nodes will turn blue. Because both are selected, whatever we do to one node will be reflected in the other selected node. Tap and drag one corner towards the center of the rectangle until it resembles the roundness of our sketch layer. Then use your node and move tool to reposition the shape over the sketch. Remember that the sketch is just a guide, so it doesn't have to be perfect. Now with these plants, unlike our first project, we're going to add some gradients and effects to make a three D illustration instead of a flat illustration. To begin with, we're going to add shadows and highlights to our flower pot. Before we determine where to place them, we need to think about where our light source is coming from in our illustration. I'll just activate a layer in my panel to demonstrate this. I'm going to select the top right hand corner. For our light source. This means that everything on the left hand side and at the bottom is going to be in shadows. They will have a darker value, and the colors towards the right and the top are going to be lighter and brighter. Keep this in mind as you work. For now, I'll just deactivate that layer. To achieve these lighter and darker values, we're going to use a new tool in our workflow, the gradient tool. Head to your tools panel on the left hand side and select the gradient tool. When you activate it, it will allow you to draw a line across your flower pot from the high light to the top right corner to the shadow at the bottom left, and it will create that automatic gradient. The nodes on the ends allow you to adjust the colors of the gradient. Tap to select the node on the right first, and then head up to our color studio and select the light Biji color in our swatches for the first node. Then tap on the second node and select the darker terracotta color we initially had. This is going to immediately give your flower pots a sense of dimension. If we go to our contextual menu at the top for this tool, we can tap the text to select our type of gradient. The options here are none. A solid gradient, a linear gradient, an elliptical gradient, a radial a conical or bitmap. The Bitmap is an interesting one and is one of my favorites as it allows you to select an image from your files as a gradient fill. I'm going to show you how this works with one of my seamless pattern tiles. I'll tap bitmap and then select place from photos and select a print. Just like that, I can insert a seamless pattern. I can also move and resize it the way I would any gradient. I'll just head back to the elliptical gradient by using the two finger undo function. At any point, you can tap on the gradient line and add another node to add another color to the gradient. But for now, I will undo and leave it as it is. To the right of the gradient options, the first icon allows you to rotate the gradient by tapping the second icon allows you to reverse the direction of the gradient. The third to unlock or lock the aspect ratio so that you can adjust each of the elliptical gradient handle separately, and I'm just going to adjust them a little bit. To add a bit more dimension, I want to apply a shiny highlight to our right hand side of the flower pot. D select all the shapes and in the color studio, select the off white color in our swatches panel as our fill with no stroke. Next, go to your shape tool and select a crescent, and we are just going to place it on the right hand side of that flower pot, where it's a little bit lighter. You can use your no tool to adjust it. Remember, you can always convert to curves using your contextual menu at the top if you want more flexibility with its shape. Next, select the move tool, and we're going to adjust its appearance with a new studio on the right toolbar. That is our effect studio. Find the text F X and tap to open the studio. This contains a whole host of fun effects that you can automatically apply to your shape. For now, the effect we are looking for is the gaussian blow. Tap on the text until it turns gray, and a slider will appear on the left of your toolbar where you can adjust the chosen effect. You can do this in three ways with the gaussian blow by adjusting the slider up and down. Or just moving your styles up and down on the screen while it's activated. Or finally, you can tap the numbers at the top of the slider to set a specific pixel value. I think I'm going to set mine around the 30s because I want to have a blurry highlight as if the light is just bouncing off the curve of the pot. In the layers panel, I'm going to set the blend mode to add and make it a bit more luminescent and then adjust the opacity down a bit until I'm happy. Finally, I want to draw your attention to the styles panel at the bottom of the FX studio. Tap on the text to open it. Whenever you apply an effect like the gradient or modified stroke pressure curve like we did in earlier lessons, you can save the effect as a style to reuse over and over again in your designs. Later, you can apply the save settings automatically to any other shapes you are working with. We're going to make sure that we are on the move tool and then make this selection of our highlight. Then in the three line menu at the top of the Styles panel, we're going to select Add style from selection. This will automatically show up as a style in this menu at the bottom. We're also going to select the rectangle shape with our move tool and save our gradient settings for this rectangle. Again, add style from selection in our menu. This is going to save so much time as we create our flower pots because we will just apply these effects with a paste function as we create our shapes. That's it for this lesson. Take some time to perhaps create a shape on your Canvas and then play with the effects found in the FX studio, or with the different gradient options using the gradient tool. When you're ready, join me in the next lesson to create our plant for this flower pot. 12. Creating the Money Plant : In this lesson, we are going to start creating the leaves and stems for our first plant. Make sure that all the shapes on your canvas are de selected by tapping the x at the bottom left of the interface. Heading to our color studio on the right, select the medium green from our color swatch palette as a fill with no stroke, and we are going to start with the circular leaves. I'll zoom in while we do this. Select your shape tool on the left, and we can create the leaves easily with the ellipse shape. Choose your ellipse and draw out a little circle. If you want a perfect circle, place one finger on your screen as you do this. I'm going to select the move tool and place the circle as one of the back leaves and adjust it to the size that I want. Next, we are going to select the gradient tool to create the shadows and highlights on the sleef. Set it on elliptical and place the highlight where you see that little circle. In the color studio in our swatches, set the light green as the lighter part of the gradient. And the darker green as the shadow color. Just like the flower pot, we are going to create the highlight on the leaf as well. Head back to our move tool and then deselect all our shapes. In the color studio on the right, select the off white from the color swatches as a fill with no stroke, and then select your shape tool, and again, select ellipse. Create a small circle at the top right of the leaf, and then using the move tool, position it on the highlight in our sketch. Now we can head to the effect studio on the right and select the gaussian blur. I'm going to set it at about four pixels using the number grid. On the right in our layers panel, we're going to set this layer on the ad blend mode to add that luminance and adjust the opacity as well. Now we can swipe a right on the high light and the leaf layer and select them both in blue and using the folder at the top of the layers panel, make a group and label it circle leaf. Now that we have created one leaf, we can use the duplicate function to duplicate the whole group to create the other leaves. Make sure the move tool is active and tap on the group in the layers panel. With a group selected, place two fingers on the screen and use your stylus to move the duplicated shape and position it on the next leaf shape in our sketch. Start with the leaves at the back and work your way forward. As you do this, to adjust the dimensions of the group as you work. I'm going to fast forward my time laps as I do this in the interest of time, but you're just repeating that same duplication moving and adjusting over and over. At any point, you can also adjust the gradients in the individual leaves as well. But for now, I'm pretty happy with what our leaves look like and the sizes of the leaf. When you're done, head back to the right to our layers panel and select the first leaf group with one finger and the last leaf group with two fingers to select them all and use the folder to group them and call this group money plant. Make sure the move tool is active and then deselect the group using the x on the bottom left. Next, for our stems. In the color studio, remove the fill and select the stroke and the dark brown color from our swatches panel. On the left, select the pen tool and set it on line mode. Create a line from each leaf to the flower pot. Because we are in line mode, the lines will end after each segment. Just work your way around the whole plant, making those stems one by one. Once that is done, activate the node tool and adjust the bend of each stem and the position of the nodes to fall around where the highlight is. I'm going to be doing this all on top of the leaves at the moment so that we can see what we're doing. I'll speed up my time laps as I go. All right. Once the leaves are where we want them, we're going to head back to the right to our layers panel, and group our stems by tapping the top layer with one finger and the bottom layer with two fingers, to select them all, selecting group at the top of the panel and naming this new group stems. Next, long press on the group and drag it below both the leaves and the flower pot. To finish up, we're going to take all of the groups associated with this plant by swiping to the right in our layers panel until they're blue, and then grouping them and naming the group plant one. Okay, that's it for this lesson. Join me in the next lesson as we complete our second plant. 13. Creating Using Styles: In this lesson, we are going to create the pot and stand for our second plant. This time, it's going to be really simple because we have already saved several style effects from our first plant. To start head to the layers panel and tap on the sketch layer. I'm also going to increase the opacity to 50% so that we can see the multiple shapes in this plant clearly. Now we can deselect all layers using the eggs. On the right, in our color studio, select the medium orange color from our swatches palette. Below this in the Layers panel, tap to open the studio and tap to activate plant number one, so that the shapes we'll create are created above this plant. To start on the pot, head over to the left tool bar to the shape tool and select the ellipse shape from the expanded list. Tap and drag on your screen to place it on your Canvas, and then use the no tool at the top left to position and resize it on top of the sketch, using it as a general guide. If the snapping feature is getting in the way of you aligning it with your sketch, you can just tap at the top right hand side to disable it. Now, we want to have a flat top to our pot. Head back to the shape tool, and this time, select the rectangle shape. Tap and drag to draw it on your Canvas. Next, activate the no tool and use it to place your rectangle over the ellipse so that it overlaps where we want to cut our shape. Once it is positioned, select the move tool and draw a rectangular marquee to select both shapes. Now we can use our shape builder tool on the left tool bar. Tap to activate it, and then in the contextual menu at the top, select the minus sign to subtract the shapes from each other. Then draw a line to remove the rectangle and the top of the ellipse in red to create the flat top on the pot. This can also be achieved by the Blean subtract function if you are using an older version of affinity designer with the Move tool. I'll just undo with two fingers and then activate the move tool to show you how this works. In the contextual menu, you can select the Blean operations and in the list, the subtract option, and this will allow you to achieve the same look. And that is our shape of our pot completed. Now to add a bit of dimension. Make sure that the pot is selected with the move tool and we can now head to the effect studio on the right and select the saved gradient style from our first pot. Tap to apply it and it will change the style to match our first pot. I really love the simplicity of this feature. Next on the left, activate the gradient tool and adjust the gradient as you feel to bring more shadow or to adjust the colors at the nodes. Remember that you can also disable the aspect ratio in the contextual menu to have a bit more freedom. Next, we're going to create our highlight. Deselect all shapes and then head to our color studio and select the off white from our swatches as the fill with no stroke. Select the shape tool on the left toolbar and our crescent shape. Tap and drag it to place it and then use the handle to rotate it into position. Activate the node tool and adjust it over the highlight of the sketch, and then long press on the screen and select, convert to curves from our quick menu. Then you can adjust any sharp nodes and make them smooth or adjust the curves. Once you're happy, return to the F X studio on the right and select that gaussian blur style that we saved in our style section and apply it. In the layers panel, tap two, select, and then disable the sketch layer to see what our second pot looks like. Let's reactivate it and continue to stand. Make sure all the shapes are deselected using the eggs. Then on the right in the color studio, head to our swatches and select the black color for the stroke with no fill. On the left toolbar, select the pen tool and place it in pen mode. We're going to use this to trace the frame at the front of the pot hoolder, following the outline of the sketch as we go. Then double tap to close that first node. Next, select the node tool and make sure that your snapping is active at the top right, as well as the snapped nodes in the top contextual menu. Now start to move the nodes around until they align horizontally and vertically for the stand. It may take a minute, but keep an eye out for the red and green lines to show that they are correctly aligned. Next, for the back of the frame, activate the pen tool again and this time, create a triangle shape with three nodes. Activate the node tool and make sure it is aligned over our last shape. Then select the move tool and on the right in the layers panel. Make sure that this layer is activated in blue, and then hold and drag the layer until it is underneath the pot layer. The blue line will indicate where you are placing it, and that is our holder done. That's all for this lesson. Join me in the next lesson to create our second plant leaves and stems. 14. Creating the Monstera: In this lesson, we are going to create the leaves and stems for our Monstera plant. We'll begin with the leaves, and for these organic shapes, we're going to be using the pencil tool. Make sure any previous shapes are de selected by using the X at the bottom left of our Canvas. Head to the right to the color studio and in our swatches, choose the light green color for our fill with no stroke. Then select the pencil tool on the left tool bar. In its settings in the contextual menu, turn on the auto close function, and I'm also going to set my stabilizer on window and set it at approximately 12. In your layers panel, tap on the top layer of the stand that we just created so that the leaves are created above it, and then using our sketch layer as a guide, we are going to draw out our first leaf, making sure that when we get close to the starting point, that the auto close circle shows up in red to close that shape off. Next, select your gradient tool on the left hand tool bar and place it on the elliptical gradient in the contextual menu. Rotate the gradient so that the single node is pointing towards the top right and in our color studio on the right hand side, make that node the light green, and then tap on the other side of the elliptical gradient and select a medium green. Adjust the handles until you have the gradient within that highlight in the sketch and that it's close to that right hand side of the leaf. Next, head to our layer effects, and in the style section head to the menu and select Add style from selection. Now, we can go back to our left tool bar to our pencil tool, and we're going to create the rest of our leaves, and the gradient should apply as we draw them out, working our way anti clockwise. Now, I'm just going to reactivate my secret highlight layer to remind us where our highlights are. Then we can head back to the gradient tool and begin to make some adjustments on our gradients on our leaves. Make sure that you have deactivated the aspect ratio so that you can move both handles of the gradient freely. Then we're going to select leaf by leaf and adjust the elliptical gradient as you feel. I'm going to make sure that my highlights on the right towards the top, using those highlight lines as a guide. I'll also make my leaves that are away from the light source a little bit darker with the gradient, as well as any areas that are shadowed by an overlapping leaf. The leaves closer to our light source. We can adjust to make the gradient a bit lighter. Once you are happy with how the gradients are placed, head to your layer studio on the right and open it. I'll just disable that highlight layer. Then we are going to group the leaves by tapping the top leaf layer with one finger and the last leaf layer with two fingers to select them all, and then tapping the folder at the top and selecting group. Name this group Monstera and tap K. Now we can deselect all our layers using the x at the bottom left of the canvas. Next, we're going to create the central veins for our leaves. On the right in our color studio, we're going to select a medium green color different to the one that we used in our gradient as the stroke and no fill. In the left tool bar, select the pen tool, and then open the layers panel and open out the monstera group. Select that first leaf in the group, and then at the top menu, select three dot menu and in the insertion targets at the bottom, select inside. Then use your pen to draw a segment across the leaf from the base to the tip. The direction will be important. Use the slider on the left to adjust the thickness of the stroke until you can see it clearly, but it's not too thick. Next tap on the second leaf layer in your layers panel. Again, select the insertion target and choose inside. Then we're going to use our pen tool to place our next segment. I'm going to repeat with selecting the third, selecting the insertion target, creating my segment with the pen tool, and continuing on for the last two leaves. I will speed my time lapse as I repeat the last two. Once you're finished, select your no tool from the left tool bar and also deactivate snapping. Then select each line one at a time and use your sketch as a guide to position the vein and bend it across the leaf. Continue all around the plant with each vein and bend it across the vein in the sketch for each of your leaves. Just take your time and do one by one, selecting in the layers panel and then adjusting. Now in the layers panel, we are going to select all of the veins by swiping to the right on each layer until it is highlighted in blue. Then we're going to tap to activate the stroke studio on the right hand side at the bottom, head to the pressure curve, and we're going to adjust the curve by bringing the right side down so that the lines in the tips of our leaves are going to thin out. The node tool on our left is still active, so you can adjust the position of the leaves if you need to. Take a minute and perhaps adjust the veins until you feel that they are positioned exactly how you would like them. Finally, collapse the leaf group and we can deselect all of our shapes with the x at the bottom left. Now in the stroke studio, we can also reset that pressure curve. Next, we are going to create the stems of the leaves. In the color studio, select the same green that you used for the veins with no fill. In the layers panel, tap on the monstera leaf group so that the stems are created above it. Then select the pen tool and ensure that it is on your line mode. Tap to draw a line from the first leaf loosely to the flower pot and repeat for each of the leaves around the plant. Because we're in line mode, each segment will end as we place it. Then on the left, select your node tool and adjust each segment one by one so that it appears to be coming from the base of the leaf. You can tap and adjust the curves, bend the segments, or add nodes. We just want them to look more organic and look like they are connecting with the veins at the base of the leaves and from there going into the pot. Now, obviously, they are still on top. In the layers panel, select the first stem with one finger and the last with a two finger tap to select them all. Then you can select the folder at the top and group them all and call the group stems. Next, activate the move tool, and then in our layers panel, tap and drag this group until it is below the pot. The next thing we're going to do is to create highlights on the leaf. Make sure all the shapes and layers are de selected at the bottom left, and then head to the swatches in the color studio. Select the off white color as a fill with no stroke. Then select the leaf group so that our highlights are created above them. Select your pencil tool and make sure the auto clothe is still active and use a sketch to draw the highlights one by one on each leaf. Once you're done, select the move tool, and in the layers panel, select all of the layers by swiping to the right. Then in the F X studio on the right, apply our style for the highlight. Now you can head back to your layers studio, and we can group all the layers together and name the group highlights. Deselect all the shapes with the x at the bottom left. To finish up, because this plant is a Swiss cheese monstera, we're going to create the cutout shapes in the leaves. In the color studios, like the Beige color as a fill with no stroke again, and then tap on the monstera layer to create our shapes above it. Like the pencil tool and then start to draw the cutout shapes using the sketch as a loose guide. It's okay if you go outside the parameters of the leaves with some of the shapes. Once you're done in the layers panel, tap the top layer with one finger and the bottom layer with a two finger tap to select them all. This time, head up to the blend mode, and we're going to select the blend mode erase. This mode will make it look like your shapes are cut out, but it is non destructive. At any time you can adjust the position of the cutouts. Then we're going to group all of these shapes using the folder at the top and we are going to name them holes. Take a moment to disable the sketch layer so that you can see what your illustration looks like without the lines of the sketch. Also deselect all shape so that you can see it clearly. When you're happy, reactivate it. That is our Monstera plant done. In the layers panel, we can take all our group layers for this plant and select them by swiping to the right on each group. Then in the folder at the top, we are going to create a group for the whole plant and call it plant two. That's it for this lesson. Met me in the next lesson to start on our last plant, the. 15. Creating the Cactus Flower Pot: In this lesson, we are going to create the shapes, shadows and highlights for our last flower pot. Make sure all the objects are deselected using the x at the bottom left, and then head over to the right to our color studio and our swatches and select the medium orange color as our fill, but with no stroke. On the right in the layer studio, tap on the plant two group so that our shapes will be created above them. I'll just zoom in on the Canvas so that we can see our shapes clearly. On the left toolbar, select the shape tool and the rectangle shape to create the bottom section of the flower pot. Tap and drag out the shape with your stylus. Next, activate your node tool on the left and position the shape using your sketch as a general guide. Now to round the bottom corners. On the left tool bar, activate the corner tool and draw out a rectangular marquee to select the bottom two nodes until they turn blue. Because both are selected, whatever we do in one node will be reflected in the other. Tap and drag one corner towards the center of the rectangle until it resembles the roundness of the sketch layer. Next, we are going to create the rim of this pot by heading back to our shape tool on the left hand side. But this time we're going to select the rounded rectangle tool from our shapes menu because we want all four corners equally rounded. Tap to drag it out to create the rim. Next, activate your no tool and position the shape using your sketch as a general guide. Now, I want to make sure that these shapes are aligned in the center. Select the move tool on the left tool bar and draw a rectangular marquee around both shapes. Then in the contextual menu at the top, I'm going to select the alignment tool and select center align. While the selection is still active, head to the right toolbar to the F X Studio and the style section at the bottom, and select our saved flowerpot style and tap to apply. Now for the highlights, D select all the shapes, and then on the right hand side, head to the color studio, and the swatches and select the off white color as a fill with no stroke. Then in the layers panel, tap to select the rim layer so that our highlights are created above it. On the left tool bar, select your pencil tool and make sure auto clothe is still active, and use the sketch to draw the highlights on the bottom of the pot and an additional section on the rim. Once you're done, select the move tool, and in the layers panel, select both shapes by swiping on the right, and then in the effect studio, apply our style for the highlight. While this selection is still active, head back to the Layer Studio and using the folder at the top, select group. Name the group highlights and select. Head back to the Layer Studio one more time. This time, tap and select the rim and the base of the flower pot. Tap the folder, select group, and name the group pot number three. That is our flower pot De. Join me in the next lesson to create our cactus plant. 16. Creating the Cactus Plant : In this lesson, we are going to create the segments, highlights and spines of our cactus plant. To start, we're going to create the individual sections of the cactus using the pencil tool. Make sure all your shapes are de selected by tapping the x at the bottom left. Then on the right in our color studio, select the light green color as our fill with no stroke. Then in the layers panel, tap to select the highlight layer so that our plant sections are going to be created above it. On our left toolbar, select our pencil tool and make sure that in the contextual menu, auto clothe is active. My stabilizer is on window and my setting is going to be approximately 12. Use the sketch as a general guide to draw the section on the top right of the cactus. Next, on the left toolbar, head to the gradient tool and activate it. In the contextual menu, select the elliptical gradient and rotate it till the single node is pointed towards the highlight of the sketch. Tap on it and on the right in the color studio, in the swatches panel, make sure that it is set on that light green. Then tap the other node and select the medium green next to it. Next, adjust the length of the gradient so that the nodes away from the light source on the right are darker. Then once you're happy with the position, On the right in our F X studio, select the three line menu and choose Add style from selection. Now we can head back to the left toolbar and select our pencil tool again. As we continue to draw out the other segments of the cactus, we're going to start with the segments the furtherst away from the base and work our way towards the central segment. The gradients should apply as we go and as we draw these shapes out. Feel free to allow the segments to overlap each other. Once you are done, you can activate the no tool on the left and adjust any curves that you would like to. Now we're going to activate the gradient tool on the left tool bar again and adjust the gradients so that the segments on the right are lighter, and those on the left are more shadowed. Once you are happy with the shapes, reactivate the move tool on the left, and then head to the layers panel on our right, and select the top segment with one finger and tap the bottom segment with a two fingertap to select them all. Then at the top folder, select group, and name the group cactus shapes. And tapo K. In the layers panel, swipe to the left on this group and lock it so that it does not move as we create our highlights on top. Now for the highlights, deselect all shapes using the x at the bottom left, and then in the color studio, in our swatches, select the off white as a fill with no stroke. In the layer studio, reselect the cactus shapes group so that our highlight is created above it. Because of the curve of these segments, we're going to head to our shape tool on the left toolbar and select the crescent shape to use for these highlights. Tap and drag to create the first crescent and rotate it with the handle, and then head up to your no tool on the left. Then you can thin out the crescent and reposition it in the top right hand corner of its segment. Then we're going to head over to the right to the Effect Studio and to its main menu. We're going to select Gaussian Blur and set it at about 20. Then in our layer studio. With this plant being closest to the light source, we're going to set it on the globe mode with full opacity. Now we can head back to the FX studio and to the style menu at the bottom and select from the three line menu, add style from selection. On the left toolbar with the selection st active, select the move tool, and we're going to use the command controller to duplicate the rest of the highlights. Tap to activate the command controller and then lock it in the bottom position. Then use your styles to tap and move to duplicate a highlight for each segment of the conectus. Then disable your command controller and activate your move tool on the left, and use it to select each highlight and move it around and resize it for each segment one by one. Continue to rotate and position until the placements are the size and shapes that you want. Then we can head over to the layers panel on the right. For the segments that are way from the light source, I'm going to select them one by one by swiping to the right and then reduce the opacity just by sliding down on the numbers. Finally, we're going to select the first highlight with a one finger tap and the last with a two finger tap to select them all, and then using the folder, group them and label the group, Cactus highlight. And tap K. Now in our layers, we can swipe to the left on this group to lock it so that it doesn't move as we create the spines of our catus. Deselect all objects with the x at the bottom left. Then head over to our color studio and select the deep green and make it a stroke this time with no fill. Then in the layers panel, tap on the catus highlight group so that our spines will be created above them. On the left tool bar, we're going to select the pen tool. In the contextual tool bar, we're going to make sure that it is on pen mode. Use it to create a basic V with three nodes on top of one of the spines in the sketch outline, and adjust the slider width to about 3.5 pixels. Then head to the stroke studio on the right hand side and down at the bottom to the pressure curve. Pull the node of the pressure curve on the left hand side to the bottom. Then tap to create a middle node and place it at the top, and then bring the node on the right hand side to the bottom as well. That should create our spiky pine. Now we're going to duplicate the spines around the cactus again using the command controller. Activate the move tool first on the left tool bar, and then tap to activate the command controller and lock it at that bottom position. I want you to use your stylus to move a spike and a new one will be created. We're not really concerned about the orientation, but just use the sketch layer as a guide to place a spike at each location. If you think you would like a few more, feel free to add a few extras, you can always delete them later. Keep going until you have created enough for each segment. Then once you are happy with how many you have created, tap on the command controller and disable it by swiping down again. Now we can head back to our spines and rotate and resize and reposition them on our cactus as we feel. Because we have locked our cactus and highlights layer, this should be fairly easy to just tap and rotate and move and resize. Remember that the sketch is just a suggestion. As I do mine, I'm going to speed up my time laps, but take your time and just position the spines where you want them. You can also use the two finger duplicate function if you feel that there are additional spikes here and there that you want to add. Feel free to pause the video if you need more time to position your spikes. Once you are done, head back to the layers panel on the right. We're going to tap on our top spike in the layer with one finger and then scroll down to find the bottom spike and tap it with two fingers to select them all. Use the folder at the top to group them and name the group spikes. And tapo K. Now in the layers panel, we are going to swipe to the right on all of our cactus plant layers and groups, and we're going to use the folder at the top to create an entire group and this time, label it plant three. Well done, getting this far. You can deselect all your shapes with the x at the bottom left, and then in our stroke studio, reset your pressure curve. Then deselect the sketch layer in your layers panel, and take a moment to look at your beautiful illustrations. Once you're done, reactivate your sketch layer, and that is it for this lesson. Join me in the next lesson to create our background, add some text and learn about our asset studio. 17. Background,Text and Assets Studio: In this lesson, we are going to create the background to our illustration. We're then going to learn how to save grouped illustrations as assets and finish up with adding a quote to our print. To begin with, deselect all the shapes on the canvas, and then on the right toolbar in the color studio, head to the swatches and select the off white color as a fill with no stroke. Then head to the layers panel and tap on our plant one as we want to place this new layer as close to the back as possible. Then head to your pencil tool on the left toolbar and ensure that in the contextual menu, it is on auto close. Then use your sketch as a general guide and create the abstract shape by tracing over it that goes behind the plants. Once you're done, head to the right to the layers panel, and if it is not already, tap to activate and then drag this layer below the plant one layer so that it is in the background. Deselect all the shapes with the x on the bottom left. And then head to the right to our color studio and In our swatches panel, select black this time as the stroke with no fill. Tap on our cactus plant in the layers panel, so that the line we're going to be creating is made above this layer. On the left, we're going to select our pen tool. In the contextual menu, place it in line mode. We want to make sure that our snapping on the top right is active. Then we're going to use the sketch to create the line at the bottom of the plants for the surface they're resting on. On the left toolbar, you can then select your no tool and zoom in to make sure that the segment is horizontally aligned at the base of the pots, and you'll see that by the snapping line that appears. Now we can deselect all our shapes using the x at the bottom, and that is our illustration complete. Finally, I want to touch on a really powerful studio in Affinity Designer, which is the Asset studio. It can be found on the right toolbar and tapping it will open up the studio. Inside it, Affinity has several pre made grouped assets that come with the app and you can tap on any of them to insert them. If you head over to the layers panel, you can see how those icons have been assembled in layers of vectors, and you can also modify and customize any of them to make them your own. I'll just do a two finger tap to remove this asset from our Canvas. You can also save assets that you have created to your assets library. Whenever you have a flat illustration or a grouped object, you can make it into an asset. In our illustration, I'm going to select our grouped tus plant from our layers panel. It is really important that you do this in a group. Otherwise, affinity will save all of the pieces of the illustration one by one into your library. It's really annoying to have to press and delete them all. To create assets, head back to your asset studio, and in the three line menu at the top, select category, and then name your category. I'll name mine vector art. Then tap the three line menu again and select add a subcategory. A new menu called assets will appear. You can tap on the new three line menu and rename this subcategory. I'll call mine plants. Now we can tap our menu one more time and this time, select add asset from selection. Now, your entire cactus is saved, and you can use it again and again. It's just brilliant. Now, this is not limited to vector images you've created. You can also save pixel based designs made in the pixel persona. I do a lot of procreate pixel watercolor motifs to use in surface pattern designs, and I can import them and save them to use as assets that I can easily add to my affinity based pattern designs to combine with vector elements. You can also export assets you have created to your file storage by tapping the three line menu. And selecting Export category to access them on the desktop version of Affinity Designer. Okay. To finish up with, we are going to use a new tool. The text tool to create a quote for our art print. On the left tool bar, the text tool has an icon with an A. We have two options when we tap on this tool, artistic text, and frame text. Frame text allows you to set your text in columns like in editorial magazines, but artistic text is best suited to decorative fonts and quotes and allows you to adjust the size of the text by using the move tool to adjust the bounding box. This is the one that we're going to use. You can tap on your Canvas once it is active to place your text box. Then in the contextual menu at the top. Select a font by tapping on the font name and scrolling through. I'm going to select copper plate. If you have a different font that you have purchased and want to use, remember that you can add it through the gallery settings that I touched on in one of our first lessons in the class. I'm going to set it in bold and make our font size about 65. In the alignment, select center align, and now we can type our text. Tap the Canvas again if your keyboard is hidden. I'm using the plant base text, and it's going to say wherever you are planted, bloom with grace. Finally, I want to make this text fit into the color scheme of the illustration. I'm going to select the move tool and center my text in the middle of the canvas, and then head to the right to the F X studio. In the style menu at the bottom, I'm going to select our gradient that we used for our plant leaves and apply it directly to the text. I'm then going to head to the main menu of the F X studio and activate the inner shadow by tapping and swiping to the right. I'm going to place the offset at about 19 and opacity at 50%. I'm also going to activate the bevel and emboss so that it looks a bit more three dimensional and place it at approximately five pixels on the top two sliders. That is our art print done. Join me in the next lesson to learn how to use our export function to export your images. 18. Exporting your Images: In this lesson, we are going to export our images. You can do this in one of two ways. We touched on the fact that there is an entire export persona in affinity, which allows you to not just export your illustration, but also allows you to export all the sections of the illustration simultaneously. We'll save that for an upcoming lesson as it's great for projects with isolated illustrations like sticker sheets. For our project, however, because we want to export the entire artboard as an art print. We're going to keep it simple and use the built in export functions in the affinity designer persona. I'm going to use our plant based art print as an example, but this applies to the T cup art print as well. Make sure all the shapes are deselected, and then in the layers panel, tap on artboard two. Before you export, the first thing you should think about is if you want your image to have a background or not. If it is going to be an out print, then you may want the white background. But if you want to use your illustrations for print on demand, for example, on a T shirt as a motif, you may want to have a transparent background so that it can be easily placed on apparel without that square shape behind it. If you want it to be transparent, before you export, head up to the three line menu at the top left of the interface. Select Canvas in this menu and then select transparent Canvas until you see that checkerboard pattern behind your illustration. For now though, I'm going to leave mine with a white background. Once you've made your decision, head to the text in this menu that says Export. This will bring up a new menu for you. At the top, you can select the format that you want to save your file as. The first one is P and G, and if you had wanted a transparent background, this is the selection that you need to make. If you want the normal white colored artboard background, you can select any of the JPEG or TIF functions. You can also export in common file settings like PSD, which is a layered file or as a PDF. The formats that I've mentioned are going to export your image as a pixel based file and set the dimensions that you choose. For now, I'll just make sure it's on JPEG. If you would like to export it as a vector file, to still allow you to change the size or color palette in another vector based software, you will need to export your file either as an SVG or an EPS file, which most vector programs can still edit. Once you've selected your format, you need to set the dimensions that you want to export the image in. Tap to adjust those dimensions using the number grid. I'm going to set mine at 1:08 zero pixels, which is common for social media. You can also tap to have it in pixels or any of the other dimensions shown in the grid. The beauty of having used all vectors in our design is that the size options are infinite. Once you step out of the number of grid, you can also lock or unlock the aspect ratio by tapping the chain symbol between the width and the height. I'm going to leave mine as is. You can adjust your presets for quality by tapping on the custom text and scrolling to select your preference. At the bottom of this menu, the file size will adjust as you make any changes so that you can actually see your file export size. On the right, you can tap and rename the export file. And below this, you have the option of the section of the file you want to export. The selection area is the default, but it is limited to the area or object that the Move tool has selected before you chose Export. Tapping the text will give you more options. If you're using several boards, you can select if you want to change the export to a different. If you select whole document, it will export an image of all of your artboards at the same time. In our case, I will select artboard two. At the bottom right, you have a wonderful option to see a preview of what you are exporting before you do it. Once you are happy with what that looks like, you can close this window and then you can select the share tab to export it to your file storage or your camera roll or any other apps. You also have the option to tap off. And cancel to return to the document. These export settings were just for the image you're trying to export to save the whole affinity document file, which I highly recommend because affinity will not automatically save your document if you do not. Just head back to the gallery and use the three lines to save the document into your file storage, and then you can come back and work on the whole document at any time later. That's it for this lesson. 19. Closing Thoughts : Thank you so much for joining me in this class. I have really enjoyed walking you through the process of creating vector illustrations, and I hope you've come away with a strong understanding of how versatile these skills can be across different creative fields. I'd love to see what you've created, whether it's a variation on the class projects or your own original design. Upload your work by taking a green shot and sharing it to the class project section. Don't be afraid to experiment with shapes, text, gradients, or even a whole new color palette. The more personal you make it, the more unique your design will be. Seeing your projects inspires me and also encourages other students to dive into vector illustration. If you are on social media, you can tag me at Cardwell and Inc so I can see and share your work in my stories. If you enjoyed the class, I'd really appreciate it if you left a review. This helps other students find the course and gives me great insights for future classes. If you've got more ideas for vector based lessons that you'd like to cover, drop your comments in the class discussion. Don't forget to follow my profile to stay updated on my latest classes, tips, and giveaways. Again, thanks for joining me and happy creating, I cannot wait to see what you come up with.