Vector Girls and Guys on the Go! Learn Affinity Designer for the iPad

1. Welcome to the Class!: Do you want to become effector girl or guy? Then you are at the right place. In this class, we explore drawing vectors in Affinity Designer for your iPad. We start by creating our first pre-made shapes, and then in another workshop, we create our first hand-drawn vector element. We have met yet. Hi, my name is Maria. I'm an artist, designer and teacher, as well as the owner of ditch design resort. A few years ago, I discovered how much fun it is to draw on your iPad. I got hooked. But I also know and have the same problem in the beginning that apps like Affinity Designer have a learning curve. Although they also open a whole new world of creative endeavors. But no varies. In this class, I'll walk you through the first and next steps to take to explore Affinity Designer. In no time, we will first create a color palette together. So you'll learn more about the shapes and how to copy, duplicate, and position them. Then we draw a vector together and you'll learn much more about filling your vectors, drawing and modifying them and how to trace images you want to work with. But that's just a small forte. I promise you, that you'll discover a lot more. And in the end, you will feel safe to work on your own projects. So join me in this class. 2. Let's explore Affinity Designer for the iPad: So now let's start to explore Affinity Designer. I have just opened the program, and this is what you see right now. You have all these sample projects here. You can definitely pull up and have a look at. They're really, there's really a lot in it. When I go here to the layers palette, you see how many different layer, Sarah, but you can see that there is a lot you can explore in Affinity Designer. So I just close that without saving because it's here and the samples here are all the sample projects. You can have a look at and see how the professionals created them. But for now, I guess for us It's enough. When we explore the program a little bit further in this class, we are going to create a color palette together. And I know it sounds super simple. And maybe you think, Oh, I don't need that, but yes, you do. Believe me you need it. Because for each new project you need a color palette included. Then you will be happy. If you have something handy like this one. You have all the different colors and the hex codes included in your documents so you can start creating right away. What we're doing now is we create all these circles. We set them in the same distance to each other. We at text here, we're going to fill the things here, the circles with a foreground color. We explore the stroke and we also add text into the document. So you see there's a lot to do. So let's get started. 3. Why Affinity Designer for the iPad?: So why should you use Affinity Designer on your iPad or maybe on your computer? I personally like using it on my iPad beakers and I can draw on the go, but you might be different and it's pretty similar. There are some gaseous which are different. But besides that Affinity Designer for your iPad and for your computer are pretty similar. For example, you have a lot of vector brushes encoded no matter which version you have a no matter where you work. You can also expand your vector library and include whatever brush you want. You can purchase them on the big side, like design cats and for example, Creative Market or even on Etsy, There are a lot of brushes you can choose from and import them into Affinity Designer. You can even create your own, of course. And then Affinity Designer has the possibility of work in the pixel and designer persona. And that means you can work in pixel, of course, in vector. So you can switch between both of them with just a click. In the pixel persona, you have access to a library of pixel brushes. Yeah, the app, they are also included. While you can access a vector brushes in the designer person, I believe that's a big plus as well. And then you can also import Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files, which I also think is a huge plus because this shows the flexibility of these applications and that you can easily switch between both of them. So in case you are a Photoshop or Illustrator girl or guy, you can easily work on your computer and Photoshop and then import into Affinity Designer with a Photoshop file or the Illustrator file and just work from there. So you have the best of both worlds. You have also a lot of file formats when you export in the export persona, because then a large window comes up and you can choose between several file formats and export in the preferred one just to your iCloud Drive or wherever you want and go from there and work on it on your computer or start selling them right away. And one big plus for me is the Assets Library, where you can save your own elements. You can even import elements into your slavery and use them again and again. Besides that, you can also draw something and import whatever you've drawn into your Assets Library, which is also a big plus because then you can use it in several projects and have it in your dialect, it in your library included when you open your program. 4. Workshop 1: Color Palette: In the first workshop, we are going to create a color palette together with eight colors. Here you learn how to create the circles and how to align them in the same distance from each other. And then we're going to use the text tool here. And to also learn how to align that correctly and also at texts on the top. Once, then we're going to save our color palette and use it for the next project. 5. The Interface: So now let's start to explore Affinity Designer. I have just opened the program, and this is what you see right now. You have all these sample projects here. You can definitely pull up and have a look at. They're really, there's really a lot in it. When I go here to the layers palette, you see how many different layer, Sarah, but you can see that there is a lot you can explore in Affinity Designer. So I just close that without saving because it's here and the samples here are all the sample projects. You can have a look at and see how the professionals created them. But for now, I guess for us It's enough. When we explore the program a little bit further in this class, we are going to create a color palette together. And I know it sounds super simple. And maybe you think, Oh, I don't need that, but yes, you do. Believe me you need it. Because for each new project you need a color palette included. Then you will be happy. If you have something handy like this one. You have all the different colors and the hex codes included in your documents so you can start creating right away. What we're doing now is we create all these circles. We set them in the same distance to each other. We at text here, we're going to fill the things here, the circles with a foreground color. We explore the stroke and we also add text into the document. So you see there's a lot to do. So let's get started. 6. Create a Document: We start by creating a document and two cells, two cells and pixel. And for that, we click here on you and then say new document. And you see this pulls up an entire new dialogue. And here's what we need to check now, what we need. So first of all, here are tons of different templates already included in Affinity Designer. You might need them or not. But for now, I just ignore them because I want to set my own height and width here and create my own document. And later on, we are even saving this template to our template library here. We have it always will. We need to make a new one. So I go now here, I'm first of all, I set pixel because I want pixel. I just click on that and say pixel. What you see, you have many more units here you can choose from. But for me, pixel is the easiest. So I said pixel and I say, the width is now three cells and the height as well. Then I set the DPI to 300 because that is the industry standard. Sometimes you might have another resolution, but usually you go with 300 to have it really crystal clear. Sometimes if you work for Spoonflower, for example, they want you to use something else and then you of course have to go with that. But usually you should be fine When you go with 300. Then you also set the right color profile. Here. Again, you can set RGB CMYK. You can set a gray color and all these kind here. But usually you're fine. If you go with RGB eight. I leave it as it is and go from there. And I can also go here to margins and place, and I should definitely do that. Because often it is turned on just as you've seen now and sometimes the tests, these edges. But I don't want them. I definitely don't want them for our color palette right now. And I also don't eat them for most of my work, so I'm happy with that. And once I'm done with all that, I can just click Okay. And my document is created 7. Create a Template: As promised, I want to show you how to create a template. So let's quickly do that. So I can, I pull up my new document dialogue field here. And then you can see I already have one preset here. I have created. We're going to create the exact same preset we have had right there. Now here for our template libraries. So I set this to 3,000 by 3,000. And also serenity PI as it was before. Then I said Unit two pixels and as before, RGB eight. And I also don't want to have any margins. So that's basically what I want. And once I have done that, I can just click here on the bottom left on the plus. And I say Now resales. Actually I don't want to use for patterns, but just my category right now I'm going to show you in a second how to create one. But for now, I just put it into category, into the category patterns and see pixel and click. Okay? And now you can see I have wanting to sell and I have 1.3. So you can create your very own categories here. So just, let's click on that one. And I just say whatever wallpaper, for example, that I would need it, but I can always get rid of that. So I just say wallpapers so you can see how that looks. Click Okay. And then you see I have a category called wallpaper. And then I can of course, add new, new templates right there. And if I want to get rid of it, so just click here on the bottom right, and you get rid of the category wallpaper, click Delete, and you are done. So now let's go to the pattern we just created to the three cells and pixel. You can of course modify it. So here you can modify the name. You want to. You can also modify your settings here are safe and new, tampered, whatever you want. But basically that's how it works. Works if you want to create a template. So once done, click, just Cancel because we already have our document here. 8. Drawing Shapes: Now we start by drawing our shapes. And for that, I'm going to show you this here. You see here is a square, but you have several more. When you click here on the bottom right, on the little triangle, you have tons of more shapes here. And for us now, I use the Ellipse tool. And I'm going to draw a circle here, shows just draw it. And you see it's not a perfect circle. So you need your finger and just type in here and you see, now get a perfect circle. If I release it now, that's fine. It is my perfect circle now, but I no need to duplicate that. So I have three more. I click on the three dots here and say Duplicate. Then I move it to the right, but not before I have picked the Move tool. And then I put it to the right and you see these little red lines and they are just there because I have turned this magnetic thing here on. If you don't have, please make sure it's on. Otherwise you can't really set the right size here, the right alignment. So make sure you put it somewhere there somehow. So once you have placed your second circle, go again here to the three lines and click Duplicate, and you see the next one jumps to the right and has the same distance than the one before. We do that, again because we need four. And again, we have a same distance here and our circle place. Now we want to move everything a little bit to the left and make it a little bit smaller. So make sure you have the Move tool and make sure you go around all the circles here. And once done, you see the green line in the middle. I can now place it as I want to make it a little bit small and you see it distorts. So I need my finger again to make sure these are well aligned circle. And now I need three rows. So again, I go to my three dots, click Duplicate, and I need to set distance. And I do that again. You see now it jumps again to the top. So I have three lines of four circles, each. Market all. Move it a little bit to the bottom. And again, I make it a bit smaller. So now I have four circles. I guess I would be fine if I just had nine colors. Now I have 12. You decide what you want. But I think eight colors are perfect or nine colors is fine. But if you want to have 12th, that's fine as well. So you decide how many colors you want, but that's the amount you should go for 9. Adding Text: Now we use our text tool and we do that by just typing here on the a. And then I draw an a here. And you see it might be too big, but it doesn't matter. Right now I pull up my keyboard and then I just give it a name. And as you have seen before, it should be summer days. Actually don't create the same one, but similar, it doesn't really matter which colors we pick here. Okay? So now you see it's a little bit too big. You have two options, whether you go here and just make it smaller. That's the easiest way I believe. And then you can turn off the keyword, just hype keyword. And then you can just move this around to wherever you want. And you can also just type in here more often, so everything is blue underlined. And then you can change the font if you want. Maybe it goes with that one. You can also change the size here. You can increase, decrease, or just type on that here and give your own number or use of presets here. I believe that's pretty handy. So you can easily modify this to your liking. You see the green line again now it's placed in the middle. Here is a calmer. So when I don t want, of course, I just need to go in here. A little bit tricky and go into my keyboard. Go to the end, and just get rid of that. Okay? I hide the keyboard again. And I'm going to go to the Move tool so I can play it again in the middle. Now we need to have our hex codes on the right. Again, we go to the Text Tool and I just type a little a here. So now I use a sign for hex code and give it a fake hex code. I just use six numbers, whichever. One, Stan, I know that I need to have this under each of the circles and I even make it a little bit smaller recurs, I think it gets confusing. If it's so large. It's not 27.6. I make it maybe 25, but it won't happen like that. You first need to really click into have it marked. And then you can just say you want it into 25. Click, Okay, and it gets smaller. Now again, we need to duplicate that. I just clicked duplicate, use my move tool and move it honors and x circle. I want it again and again. So we go here. Here. This works with text as well as with circles and shapes, other shapes, whatever you saw just now that didn't jump to the right. So let's do that again. Make sure it's marked. Then click here, duplicate, and then move it honors a circle. And then we do that again. Sometimes, maybe it's the back, sometimes it doesn't work. Okay, now we have four in a row, and now I mark it all. So let's be careful. When it's marked. We do that again. Duplicate. Move it one step to the bottom. And then we do it again. You see, now it works. I make it a bit smaller because you see now it's very far on the edge here, so we mark it all here. I didn't catch the top of the circles so it didn't work well and make it a little bit smaller. Don't release. Just type in again with your finger to have it set to the perfect size. Okay? I think it's okay now. Now we need to take care of the colors 10. Importing Colors: I now imported these colors from my photo, roll, camera roll. So I just go to Open and then say import from photos and important this picture. So let me pull that up because I want to get this into the color palette. So I, it's marked now so I can just say copy. Then I go to my document. We just created, and I say paste. And it's in. So since we don't have an art board, I can just stack it for now, but it doesn't matter. We can just use it from here. So now I want to fill my circles, was one of these colors. So how do we do that? We go here, Mark the circle and you see that it's marked recursive, it has a blue frame around it. Then we go to the Layers palette. So let me show you how this looks. Here are all the circles we created and here's all the texts we create. Here on top is the color palette, as well as the big text here with so many days. So it's all there. And now I need to fill my circles. So it's marked in this also marked here in my color palette. I go to here to my color wheel. Then I pick one of these colors. So go to the eye dropper, press it down, pick one of the colors. We start with, that one. I release it, and once done it's here, but doesn't matter because I need here. So I click on that again. And then it jumps also into my powder. It's a bit tricky, I believe at the beginning I had a hard time getting all the colors, but now it's easy. Again, I marked circle. Go here. You see eyedropper tool. Pick another color. Click on that, and it jumps in here. These are the colors I picked. Now, maybe, I need some, maybe not, but for now that's what I have chosen. I go back to my layers palette and I see this one here. I don't need that anymore. So I swipe to the left and get this menu and say Delete. And I'm rid of that. So now I need to set the hex code. That takes some time because we first need to figure out what the hex code is. And for that, we change the color wheel. When I go to the right, you quickly see that here's the hex code coming up. And I need to memorize that. I need to keep it in mind to put it under it. I usually go back and see if it's correct. Market again, 6940269. Happy to see it. So let's go back. Now. They are both on top of each other. I believe there's something where I need to get rid of this one. We do that in a second, but I definitely need that one. Okay. I type on it so it's marked. And then I go here with my layers palette. Swipe to the left click delete, and it's gone. Now I need to do that with each of these circles, so it takes some time, but it's worth it. So I keep that in mind again. I go here, type in here. Check again if it's right. It is. So I move on. Okay, Now we're done. We have created our color palette. You can see now I have filled all the circles and edit all the hex code. And we could also now merge these together or put them in a group. And that's what I'm going to do now. I put all the circles into groups, so let me do that. All the colors here, I need to mark them so you can see it better. Usually I don't need but I'm going to do that now. Then I just pinch it altogether and it's now in a group. And let's do the same with the text. See I just swipe to the right. And I've marked it all. And again, I pinch it together. And it's a group. And now I have even some circles which don't which I don't need anymore with leases are duplicates. So now I just have two groups, one with all the text and one with all the circles 11. Save & Export: What I believe is a little bit strange in Affinity Designer is that I have my document here right now, but it's not safe and it doesn't have a title. So let's do that first. Let's give it a title here. So I'm going to type on the hamburger menu and say Save. As. Now, I can add a name. And I say summer days colors. Now, when I click Save, it, goes to my iPad and I can save it there. And you see I have created a folder on my iPad called color palettes affinity. And then I can just say safe, and it's there. And now it also has a name. But if I don't do that, it lifts here as an open document. Because when I click here on the x, it's asked me if I want to close the document, if I haven't saved it and close it yet, scan, of course, so I click Cancel now and now I have saved my document, but I also want to export it. So let me pull that up again. Go here to this tree, to the hamburger menu inside Affinity Designer. And then we click here Export. And then now can choose what kind of file I want. And I think I want a JPEG now. I can do now the same. I can set the height and width. I can change something here. But I don't want your eyes can just say, Okay, and it will save as a JPEG on my iPad, I click Cancel now because I have the affinity file, which is just fine. So now we're done basically with our color palette. So we can move on 12. Workshop 2: Vector Leaf: In this class, we're going to create this vector together. For that, we're going to import our color palette we have created in the previous class. And then we're going to create this vector area for the background. And then we draw a stem and several leaves, fill them with color partly and others we just give a stroke and do not fill them at all. But we move the field area down a little bit and have a look at all the layers we are going to create for that. We also put everything into groups. And you can see how to edit the layers in this project 13. What can you do with your Vector Files?: Once you have created this vector file and export it to your iCloud folder, you can do several things with it. You can use it as a background for your iPad if you want to. But you can also upload it to a print on demand service and have someone print a mark, pillow, Canvas, whatever for you. So let me quickly show you what you can do here. I am on printed phi.com and I have an account there. So I can just put my vector files on a product. So let's just pick Mac for example, and this one. And then I just say I want to start designing and apply the uploaded file to it. So I have already uploaded the file, so they are in my library. And once I can go there, I can just apply it to the mark. I can of course make it a bit smaller or larger. And then I can just click preview and you can see how this looks on a Mac. You can do the same with a pillow or with what error you want to pick here. So let's just use here, for example, a pollster. I want to apply to this poster. Again, I click, just start designing. And then in my library there is a file. And I'm going to apply it so I can see how that looks here. Of course it would look like server at some text here, but just to show you how that can work, how that works actually for several products. You can just apply it here and preview it here. Then you can start selling this. Or you can also go ahead and orders is just for yourself and give it as a gift, for example. So you have tons of options, what you can do with vectors, and as I said, you can of course, at text here interface designer, and then have that uploaded to whatever print on-demand service you choose. When you aren't on print defy. It is even cheaper when you order it just for yourself and don't wanna sell it. So maybe it's worth a look. It's not to advertise printing PHI. There are several Altair doesn't matter which one you choose. But I know they have a good quality and they deliver their products pretty quickly. So let's try to create this vector in Affinity Designer 14. Clean up the Gallery: So now let's get familiar with the gallery here in Affinity Designer. You can see what happened. I have created several projects here, and they are everywhere here, my gallery. And imagine I have 50 projects here, so they are all here inside and it could look very confusing and you won't be able to find anything anymore. So let's put these things together into one folder and name that folder. So you have a little bit tight up here. So now this is a color palette, and when I go with my finger on it, you see it all starts shaking. And when I now put this on top of each other, they disappear in one folder. You see they are both now on the folder. And I can keep them here inside or move them out again. So I can just say move out of project and it's gone. It's not really gone. It's here inside. Here is still a folder, so let me put that back in because I really liked that. And now I want to name that. So I just say on the three little lines here, I say Rename and I say it's color palette. And Okay, now you see here on top is called color palettes, and I can put them on top of each other. So here, still this files are named. So please don't get confused. You can name the file and you can name the folder. If you file still unnamed. Also need to go on the three lines here and say Save or Save As. And put that with a name on your iPad folder or send it to your computer. I will put it into my iCloud Drive. So I just say vector here and click Save. Now it asked me where they should save it. I have now calipers affinity here is okay, so for now I just click Save and you'll see it gets the name vector now and now I can move it if I could, I could move it to the folder calipers what doesn't fit, but I could definitely on top of each other. Then I have a new folder. Again. Now I have that one name, this one not here. I don't have that one named either. So I would have to name this one as my projects, for example, and names of how separately. And this is how you clean up your gallery. Of course, if you don't meet the folder anymore, it's also not a big issue. You can just move your projects out, out of project. And then you have an empty folder here. And you can get rid of that as well. 15. Create a new Document: Now let's start by creating a new document. So you go here to New and say new document. You already know this interface. And you also already know all the presets which are here. And yes, we could use now this preset if we want to. But now there's something special, please keep in mind. I use pixels, you don't have to use something else of course. But please keep in mind that you have RGB set here. There are several more color profiles, but usually it's fine if you stick to RGB in case you only want to print your fat, you might want to choose CMYK here, but please check with whoever you send your file to be Chris, Sometimes, even if it's a provider like print defy, they are fine with RGB instead of CMYK. Also, when you create your document, as we said, downturn on the margins, we don't need them. So you can basically take care that this is turned off and this is all set to zero. You see? It's turned off. No margin, no bleed. So it's fine. And now there's something special. I want to create an art board, and this is why I turn this on and I need that art board. Let me just pull up the document. Because beside what I'm drawing, I also need my color palette here on the left side. And I'm going to get that into my document now and create an output from that. So let's go back and grab the color palette we created. And I now make sure that I have the colors picked. I don't really need the hex code right now because I can pick the color from there. And if that is marked, make sure that is if not, have a look here that you have marked the group, that one because that is a tax group, but that one, this is the color group. Then you click here on these three dots and say Copy, and go back to your new document and say paste. And now we have that here. But what I want, I want that here next to my art board because here's where I want to draw and here is where I want to pick my colors. So in best case, I would have two art boards and have them next to each other so it can work easier. So I can do that here. So you just click on the three lines here and say art boards and you see nothing really happened. What you need to do now is draw around your art board here. You also need to get such again, okay? Now I just draw around it. And now the program knows that this should get an art board. And actually it is now. So now I have my two art boards here. I didn't do anything to it. It's just mark now as artwork too, while this is outward one. And now I can start working here. 16. Drawing the Background: Now we start by drawing the background with a great color. I usually use the pencil tool, but you can definitely also use the pen tool. That's up to you, but maybe just follow me along here. So you know what I mean? But both tools are fine for this work. So first of all, I need to set my stroke right now. Stroke and color are both white. Which won't help because I really don't need a color fill right now. Not yet at least. But I need a stroke. This stroke needs to be black because actually you should see what I'm drawing, right? So it's a good thing to have a black stroke here. And once then I can just start drawing a background. I can always modify it. So don't worry too much how it looks right now. Just go around and you see that you close it and you can just do that by adding your notes over each other. Now I put them over each other, then it's closed. You can hardly see that right now because the stroke is pretty thin. We can change that by going under the circle, the filled circle here, and just increase the width of this just for now because we want to see it now I turn that off in a minute. But for now we want to see something that's why now I can modify what I have drawn here just to what I want. Each of these nodes can be modified. You can make them larger or smaller. You can change them. And if you don't want it, you can undo it with two fingers. So when you are happy with your background, however that may look, you can make that smaller. And then we say, we don't need a stroke anymore here. So I turn the stroke off and I use a fill and just pick maybe the dark gray type into that. And it's now filled with gray. You can still modify everything here we can later on. We can also change this to different colors. Just swipe, work on separate layers so we can always change things here in our vector. Yeah, that's the starting point right now. I don't really like how this looks, so I'm going to modify it a little bit. You see all the things I can do here. I can form each of these nodes easily. And you can also make it bigger or smaller. It doesn't matter because it's vector. In vector, you don't have, you don't need to worry about blurriness here, so you can just do it to your liking of k. So now this is our for now and we start to draw our leaf in the next lesson 17. Drawing the Vector Leaf: So now we want to draw our leaves and we start with the stem. And you can see it better. I'm going to turn off the vector we just drove for the background. And now we can start creating our drawing, our leaf. I'm going to go to the back, to the stroke layer here. And I don't need a fill right now, but I definitely need a black stroke. And I also need to add the stroke width. So yeah, maybe five something, but we can change that later. I'm going to just start drawing right now. And then we see how that girls go to the pencil tool. And maybe also here you can choose between different stabilizers. I usually use a rope stabilise, although it's a pretty strange to draw, you see, it's running behind me somehow. But now you can see them saying I'm going to get rid of that. Course is big enough. But I can also reduce the size of the stroke a little. We modify that layer. Now I draw a stem here. Well, I think that looks good. I can also modify that if I want to, wherever are these nudes? I can just move them and just move them somewhere else. So I just need to go to the new tool and then I can modify them. I don't want that right now because I like how that looks. But that's how you can do it if you don't like what you've drawn. And I just move it a little bit out of the middle here because I now want to draw a leaf and a little bit of space. So let's draw a leaf. So what's difficult now is that you need this closed and maybe it's not. So you really need to go over it here to make sure that you leave is closed. And you see I just move it and then when I move it over each other, I know it is a closed shape now. So now I'm going to put my leaf here somewhere, the stem as well. And then I start to put them. I just need to have the right size. Now. You see the green line. It helps me to position that. I'm also going to zoom in in a second to see if that's okay. So now I know I needed a little bit smaller. So I'm going to mark it all and just make it a bit smaller here. Again, I can change that later on. I just need to have a size that fits on my art board for now. Now, I'm going to duplicate my leaf. I like how that looks. I'm going to zoom in. Yes, it looks good, but that's something for later as well. So now I'm going to duplicate it. And I will move it around the stem. Make sure it is marked otherwise it won't get duplicated. And don't forget each leaf is unique. So we are going to modify it in a bit. You see you can already make it bigger or smaller here, but you can also adjust it as it is. And we do that in a bit. Okay. I believe this is enough. So now we have all our leaves and I just show you how to modify them a bit. So go to the neutral and then you can just move the different nodes. You can even add another one. Let's say you want to have a new tear as well. And then you can make it a bit bigger here. Doing so each phase leaves, gets unique and knowledge right time to do that because you want to have that done before you start to duplicate the entire layer and fill it with colors. So now I just go back to my layers palette and see what happened here. All of these different leaves are on different layers here in my art board. And at the bottom there is the one we have turned off here with a fill. Those are all, there's only two go into one group. So we can apply changes to Cool. So just marking them all so you can see it. I can now group it here or just no, pinch everything together. And it's also done. Still, I can modify anything here, so don't worry about that. It's just easier to see it now, recourse. Now I have my leafs here and the background here. So I can work better on it. So next step is to duplicate that group because we want to have a duplicate in the background, move it a little bit to the bottom, and then get rid of the other leaves. So I mark the group. Then I say here on the three dots, duplicate and you see I have a second group. We just need to decide on which group we work first. I guess I do it on the top one. And what I need to do now is I'm going to fill my top leaves this one and maybe this and maybe these two colors. So I have marked, you can see that recurs a nudes are there. And then I can go to my color palette and pick a color here from palette. So I made it really small. So let's do it like that. Going to the color palette, is that marked? Yes. Color palette. Now, I need to fill it. So I go to the fill my eye dropper tool and just pick a color here, maybe this lighter one, and type on that again, it's filled. You can also pick another color. Doesn't really matter. You can, you can basically do what you want here and when you want or insane because you can change everything in vector. Next one, type on it. Again. Use the same color. And here as well. Again, color. And well, well maybe we leave it for now. We can change that later once again. So now this is okay. Going to close this group. Now I go into the second group and I'm going to get rid of these, these leaves and the second group and that one. And the second one, they are still on top of each other. So I'm going to move it down a bit so I can see it better. So now I know what I need to get rid of. So of course I need to get rid of the stem, which is most probably here on the bottom. Yes. I just swipe to the left and say Delete. And then I'm also need to get rid of this one, delete, this one, delete. One on the top, also delete. And now I have just those left I want to have, but I just want the fill and no more strokes. So I go to the top of the group and I'm going to get rid of the stroke here. Just say no stroke anymore. So everything is going right now. And here. I need to fill it with a color. And now you see what has happened. And I also wanted to show you what happens if you change your mind. For example, if you don't want the fill anymore here, you can even do that. It's a little bit tricky because we deleted that. But we can go back into the group and duplicate that and get it back into the other group. So as I said, a little bit tricky, but we do that so you know how that works in case you need that support group here. So right. That's right. So I just click on that and say Duplicate. Just make sure you know where that is. You really need to keep that in mind. Now, I'm going to move that into the other group. So it's still there, it's still sorted. And now I can move it a little bit to the bottom at the other ones. So now I need to get rid of this fill and the stroke. So let's do that. Going back here to go to Stroke. Get rid of that. Okay? And now I need to get rid of the fill. First group looking for the leaf now. It has to be this one. Yes. I need to get rid of the fill here. I guess I'm in the front group. Okay. So here you go. That's how it looks now. And now we can even modify it further. For example, if you want a stroke smaller, no problem. Go back to your layers palette. Go back to the first group because it's the group with a stroke. And then you go back to your palette here, click on Stroke. And I guess we're not in the right section here. This one is red. So now I'm going to modify the stroke. Ca can now set the width smaller, and then I'm done. So now most done. But we need to go in to really make sure that everything is where it should be. I'm going in here and I'm going to check if my nodes are at the right place. So you see sometimes a little bit tricky. So you can see it's really here. K is a little bit out of order. I'm going to move that back in. Okay. Okay. So let's check the entire thing. Okay, I think it looks good. And now we turn on the background. Let's go to the Layers palette, go to the bottom and turn that on. And now it looks as if it's no longer filled, so for whatever reason. Okay. So now you see that it's a little bit smaller. So I'm going to move that, make it a little bit larger. And also modify my notes here. Okay, that's it. We're done with our vector. You can keep modifying it. Here's now a stroke. I don't want to, so let's get rid of that quickly. But then we're done with our vector 18. Different Color Ways: So now let me quickly show you that you can change the color. Here. We have so many colors so we can definitely try something else. We always need to grow the color to the layer palette for that. And I just click here what I want to change. And then I go here, back to the colors. And then I can just pick another color. This is, I think it's the right one. Now let's use maybe that one and just type on that. And you see it changed. You can also change the color of the leaves all at once. So go to the layer with leaves, pick a new color. Maybe this one. If it looks good. If not, we can always go back. I'm going to show you how to go back in a second. Again, we go to the group and change the fill here. Now everything is filled. So let's not what we wanted. We wanted to have this one which is the different group we had. And now it's filled. Okay. You see how that goes? If you don't like it, two fingers, just go back. You're back to where you were. You see we just didn't feel the two leaves here. But it's also a modification if you want to. You can change basically everything. And that's one of the great things about vectors because we have everything on different layers. We can easily fill them with different colors. So this is all possible with vectors, while we have a harder time doing that. For example, in procreate or in Photoshop when we are working with raster images 19. Exporting the Vector File: Now let's export our image and there are a lot of options in Affinity Designer to do that. I show you no one. And I go for that to my move tool and mark everything here. And now you can click on the three lines here and say Export. And now you can choose when you export something as a PNG, what we definitely should do right now you don't have a background, which is good, but you don't have the layers anymore either. So if you want to keep the layers, you would need to save it as an Affinity Designer file, just as I've shown you before, or as a PSD file as would also be fine. But if you use it as a PNG, it gets a raster image. You could use SVG. So you have a vector, actually. I'd highly recommend that because then you can still increase or decrease, decrease, you can always decrease, but can still increase it and use it as a vector. And when you do that, you can click Okay, and just save it where you want. And you see here it has no background, which is pretty handy. Let's cancel quickly recurse. I want to show you when you use PNG that you better put here selection only. Because then everything we just select it as marked and gets exported. While it's not when you use the entire document. So I go back to SVG now because as I said, I want to keep the vector file and then I just save it here, give it a name. You want to give it a name. Click here, say show keyword, and I say vector, row, vector. To see it now has something was untitled, but we could change that. Also on our iPad. The main thing is it's exported not as a vector. And you can keep working with it. 20. Workshop No. 3: Tracing Images: In this class, you will learn more about tracing images. And we will grab for that from the stock photo library, which is built into Affinity Designer, a picture from the monstera leaf and trace it. Once traced, we're going to fill it with car and then get off the color. And then we're going to add something behind to give it the borehole look. We will also add our element to the asset library here and see what we can do with it when it's in sight. For that, we look here at the different menus. And we also have a look at the Affinity Designer interface, where there are a lot of interesting settings you can choose from 21. Material: For this class, you do not need a lot of material. We will need our iPad. I have an iPad Pro, but you can also have an iPad Air. The main thing is it needs to be Apple Pencil capable. So it would be great if you have a stylus you can use for this work. You also need Affinity Designer, which is looking like this here in the app store. Or you can get it from the zarif.com website. And the best thing is it's available for Windows as well as for Mac computers and four tablets. So you can get it from there. You can get the entire bundle with all three programs serif has to offer. Or you can just get Affinity Designer, which is for this class. Yeah, that's all you need and you can do a lot with this program. So it's well-worth to explore it and work with it 22. The Affinity Designer Interface: Settings: We already talked about the Affinity Designer interface in the last two workshops. We talked about new documents, how to open files, and how to use templates as well. When you have saved them on your iPad, you can, when you have set your own document, you can save it as a template. And once then you can save it on your iPad or iCloud Drive or wherever. And then you can open them here from your iPad. But that's not all. There's just a short overview of what is possible here. What I personally like are these settings. And they are really interesting because you can set some things here so you don't have to worry about it anymore. What you need to do is you need to go through each of these settings and adapt it to your liking. For example, I usually start with RGB color mode. You might be different and you can choose here from what you want and what you prefer. I sent it to RGB. And that's the perfect color profile for in most cases. And if I set it like that, it's always pulled up. So I don't need to worry about that anymore. And you can also say which one is the default gray scale profile, or here the default CMYK profile. So just choose whatever you need here and then move to the next one here is smartwatch tools. Maybe you want to change something here. One thing I personally like is to allow the canvas rotation and all tool so I can just turn it around wherever I need to put my hands so I have that turned on. Maybe you like that or you don't, but make sure that you have targeted on. Here you can choose something about the pencil allows scribble, was text tools or an able double-tap. Change the pressure here. All that kind of stuff. Just goes through it all and see what suits your needs. If you have mess it up for one reason or another, just go to reset and just select it all and reset the entire thing and you are back to where you were. So that's about the settings here. I guess you don't need to, to work on much more. And now we create a document and start tracing our leaf 23. Getting set up: So now we have to create our document for that. We go to New just in case you don't have a template yet, most probably you don't go to New. And then click new document. I have some templates here on the bottom. And well, maybe you have them true from the previous workshops. If not, just type in here whatever you want and then maybe you want to save it. Maybe you also want to save it on your iPad so you can pull it up from the template tool later on. So for me, that's fine. Now I just pick this result and pixel, and I have set it to 300 DPI. I've picked pixels here and nothing else. So I like to work with pixels. And then you can also choose between the color profile here. But that is what we said previously as the default one. So I'm happy with that. And I can also set here the margins and bleed. Mostly you don't need make sure it's all to zero. And you can go from there so you don't need to variable that. And what I like is to create an art board because then I can put something on the left or on the right somewhere on my document, work on something like a desktop. I personally like that. I prefer that. That's why I usually toggled on. And once I'm done with all set, I click Okay. And it creates a document for me 24. Finding a picture in one of the Stock Libraries: Before we can now start tracing, we need to find an image we can trace. And here is always a problem. If you go to Google and just search for an image, most probably nothing will happen, but they are all copyright protected. So it's always better to look for a stock library where you can use the images from. Or maybe you look for realty free images, something like that. Just not go there, grip whatever you want for maybe on Pinterest and start tracing. That's not allowed. So what you need to do is you need to go to the stock library that is here, the one with these images over each other. And then you can see here that you have Pixabay as well as Pexels. I just use Pixabay now, but it's just me. You can use whatever you want, type in Monstera. And then I see what they're coming up with. And you see there a lot of different images here. And I like this one because it just in front and I can see everything. So I guess I will drag this one to you see I do it with my finger. Just drag it on the document and then we release it. It takes a little bit because it needs to download. And then it opens in my document and it's pretty large, so you see how big it is. So I made this smaller and just make my image smaller to adapt it to my document. Sure, I can then go back down very about blurriness here. You might vary about this because you know that pixel images get blurry if you really zoom in like this. And so vectors don't. But in this case we just need it for the outline so you don't really need to get a varied about blurriness. So I close that. And then we finally start tracing our image 25. Drawing the Monstera Leaf: So first things first, I go to the layer panel and I have my image here. And what I do now is I love it because I don't want it to move around. So I just swept to the left and click Lock and it's locked. So when an hour mark it and go here to opacity, I can type in a new opacity because I don't need it that permanent. I just needed a little bit more in the background. So I type in 50%, see if that works yet, that's okay. And now we can start tracing our image. So now let's start by dragging this around, turning it around, and then we grab the pen tool here and make sure that you have set the fill to nothing and the stroke to black. And once then you also need to go to set the size of the stroke and tear. My case is 3.2 PT. You can increase or decrease. For now, it doesn't really matter. We will adapt it later and make it fit to the other the other elements, because I want them to have it all the same size. And I have the one with 3.2 while the other one has 1.5, something like that, it doesn't look good and if I want to sell it as a said, it should be, it should be set correctly. Now, I'm going to trace it by just tapping here and I drag it a little bit my pen. See, when I go around, I just follow the line. It is in the beginning, it's a little bit tricky, but you quickly get practice doing that. So you can just go around here and, you know, in case you are messing this up, you can always go back with two fingers. So don't worry too much about that. That's like me here. The only thing you can really do is closing the tab on, then you definitely need to go back. The great thing about vector is that you can adapt that layer. You can change any point I said here later on. So I can just go around now and don't worry about anything. Okay, now we need to close the line. You see I have two nodes here and then I go onto this one and it's now read and release it. So now I need to turn off my image. Go to the Layers palette and turn that off so you can see now if there's anything wrong or could look better, or you need to change something, but I think I like it. It's okay. Let's turn it on again because I need these holes, cut them out from the leaf here. There is three. Maybe we need to start a new path here. And I can do that because I have closed the line. Again, closing. It. Same here. Closed. And this one here. Okay. Again, I turn that off and see if I like it here. Maybe there's a little bit of an edge. So I wanted to fix that. For that, I go to my new tool here and we're going to tap on it now, all these little white dots are here. And this is what I can change. So you see, I can just turn it around modifier. It's totally up to you. You can do whatever you want here. And once done, you can just go off this one and see if the overall picture is fine. Maybe here. No, that's okay. Maybe this is a little bit too straight. Like you see, I can easily change that. And great thing is it won't get blurry no matter how big I make it. Okay, that's it for now. Now, I want to cut these things out. This is something I do by marking everything. So make sure you have the blue box around everything and don't miss an edge or anything, then it's just not mark. Once done, you can go here to this little plus and click on Explore. That's it. You don't see anything right now. But if you turn that on, you see know, that behind that there is nothing anymore. And we can also see that when we fill it now with color. So let's go to the fill. Set a color. And now you can see that these here are cut off. You can of course cut off some more. You are not limited to what the picture says. It's totally up to you. Then you would go ahead and just use your pen tool again, create a whole and use after marking everything the XOR again, you have another home for me. That's okay. Now, I can leave it as it is. That's my monstera leaf, which I traced from the image. And you see that it looks totally different to what the image was. 26. Adding the Monstera Leaf to the Assets Library: Now let's talk about adding our monstera leaf to the Assets Library. So here is your asset library. When you click on that and you can see I have RE1 inside, but there are more. These are already included. You can easily add more. Whatever you have if you have some clip art or you have elements, whatever kind of, I'd say PNG elements. You can easily add them here to your asset library. And the great thing is they are always there. You can, you can just pull them up and use them and you have a great overview and pull them into your document if you are designing, I personally really like these assets library, but you need to be a little bit used to the handling. So let's do that. First of all, I'm going to add these leaf now to the library. Again, I have the Move tool and make sure that you have everything turned on on one in one group. Because if you don't have that, they are adding all the elements as a single element to your library. I want to have the entire leaf into my library, so I'm going to mark that here. I can also do that with the move tool or the set. Again, make sure that you don't miss anything here. And once you've done that, you are in the acid library. Just click here on the three lines and say at Asset From Selection. And you see that's how easy it is. It's already inside. If you want to rename your library, here you see it's called bold elements and the rest is called default. So I want to change that. So I go to the three lines here on top, and I just say Rename Category. And if there are both elements, I just wanted now, you say maybe Bobo. So we have it altogether. So clipboard, because I already have another one which I want to delete right now. So you see now it's turned into bowl clipboard. And when I go here to the arrows to see all those which are already included. And then you see what I have already added. And this is what I don't want anymore. So I'm going to the three lines again here. And then I say Delete category and say yes. So now I just, I'm just left with my bot Clip Art. And I can also rename that. So again, on the hamburger menu, say Rename Category. And now it makes sense to just name them well and good. So you see, it changes immediately. And I have all my assets to, in this case, in inside my category here 27. Creating a new Vector from the Leaf: So now I want to create something new from my leave. And that's why I go out of my Assets Library and I turn off the fill. So make sure you're on the fill and then just turn it off and you are left with a line art. So let us what we are going to use now. Of course you don't have to use it like I do. You can create something different. But I just want to have a stamp here now and have some color in the background. What shape, and maybe some circles. So let's do something like that. So what I do is I go to my neutral and see if I can use some of the nodes, just pull them out and create a stem from it. If there is something which is too straight and what I don't like, I just tap in and have another minute and then I can modify them. Sometimes it takes some times until you are happy with it. That's okay. Take your time at as many nodes as you want to. But in best-case, not more than you need to. Okay. I'm happy with that. Now, I'm going to leave my leaf acid is, and now I just draw something in the background. Then put on the leaf again. So just let us turn to leave off for now. And I draw the background with the pen tool. Once you have created your background, however, as it looks, you can of course modified with a new tool. Just go there and modify it a bit. And it's also helpful to turn on your leaf. You can see how it goes. No, it's under the background so I just pull it all over it so you can see it better. Okay. Now, go back to the background. And then I add and no stroke, but fill, no stroke. Then I go to the fill and pick a color, which I can say lists with for now. Because I can pick the color from my color palette, which I already have created, but I first want to get the background right. So now let's go here and modify the background. I want it to look smooth. Just going around here onto a fields, right? And now I grab the colors. And I also as promised, I have to check if the leaf has the right stroke. So let's go to the library and go to the first vector, recreate it. And I just mark it. So I can check here what size it has. Here. It has 1.2. I guess we have put all 1.2. Yeah. So that's what I need to do as well. And I also need the color palette. So that's what I grew up now from here. Just market, say copy. And then I go back to my document and say paste. You see my college out there. Just move them over. And now I also set the stroke of my leaf to 1.2. You see it looks much different now. Okay? Now we need to change the color for the background to make it look a bit nicer and make it fit to the other elements. So colorful. Night, grab the eye dropper. And maybe I use setColor. And once I have it, I tap in here and it jumps to that color. So it's a little bit dark. So you can hardly see that we would need to follow to make it seem more viewable. But I guess I better pick another color brighter one. Sometimes play around with different color fills. You have the perfect one. That's completely normal. And you might want to change it all over again. Depends, of course, on you. And you can, again, just change appearance here Okay, now I want some, some circles, something like that, because it looks pretty boring right now. So let's go to the Shape tool here. When I go to the bottom right on this little triangle, you see there are all kind of shapes here. So I go to the Ellipse tool and draw an ellipse. I put down my finger to have a perfect circle. And now it has the same color. It doesn't look good. So let's go back here, grab another color. Maybe this one we see here, That's okay. Then to the move tool to move it around. And also I don't want a stroke. So I go back here, go to my stroke and just get rid of it. Okay? So now I can decide if I want to put the circle. Now, here are all the circles from my color palette. I wanted to put this circle. And there's a leaf, which is, of course, a good idea. And of course if I want to have a full opacity, I can also set the opacity down here, and I can just do that by swiping with my pencil here four and back. And I like to have a Chinese true a little bit. I think I'll leave that as it is. And now I'm going to duplicate my circle and add one more here. I also leave the opacity and just go to the three dots again and say duplicate. And then I move that circle and make it larger. And now I grab another color. The good thing is all colors fit shouldn't be a big deal. That one doesn't really fit because of the background. So let's pick another one. We need to play with it. We need to figure out which one looks good and which not. Okay. I like that. I like also that things are shining through, but I guess I'm going to leave it as it is. I could also fill leaf. Let's see how that looks. Most probably doesn't, but you never know. Let's do it. Now. I don't like it. Just try different color ways. It doesn't look too bad. But I guess I will go for the one was no fill. But again, that's up to you. And now we have our second clip art ready for the set. Maybe you want to create or maybe you want to use it for Mark, if you add some text or you can create a pillow, or there are so many options. What you can create from them because you can cite them in different ways. And what you also shouldn't know, you already know from the other workshop, but just a quick note, I want to export it. So I market or go to a street. Toggles here to the hamburger menu and say Export. If I want to keep the layers, I use SVG. If I want to have a flat image, a restaurant image was no background, I use PNG. And if I want to keep the full size of the full layers ever seen, I would maybe use PSD, but in this case, I just use SVG, the crusades, the vector format. And I don't want to use the whole document, I just want to have the selection area. And then when I click here on Okay, it pulls up my my iPad. I could drive and I can give it another name. So I just say no factor. Two. Of course we will rename that layer, but for now, let's just click Save. And one more thing I want to show you here. I have marked every single, but it's all on separate layers. So I'm going to just merge it together. And then I'm going to mark that entire group and then go here and add it to my Asset Library and from selection. And it's in, if I wouldn't have merchant, I would have had all elements separately, the background circled and Mel leaf. That's it. Now we have our element