Wreaths & Floral Designs in Adobe Illustrator - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class

1. Create Wreaths and Floral Designs in Adobe Illustrator -Introduction: Hello, I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this Graphic Design for Lunch class, Create Wreaths and Floral Designs in Adobe Illustrator. Graphic Design for Lunch is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and for working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. In this class, we'll look at a range of ways that you can use downloaded floral and leaf shapes to make completed designs in Illustrator. You'll see how to make circular and heart-shaped wreaths, a swash of florals and a rectangular design. Now each design features different techniques for assembling the layout. Along the way, you'll learn valuable Illustrator workflows, as well as a handy tool for re-coloring complex art. Now we're using free vector floral elements for this class, but the designs could also be made using your own elements and then sold as ready-to-use designs. Once you've completed this course, you will have enhanced your knowledge of working with Illustrator. Without further ado, let's get started making floral designs in Illustrator. 2. Create a Wreath: The first floral element that we'll create will be a wreath. I have opened one of the image sets that I've downloaded, this one is from Freepik and I'll give you the download link so that you can follow along. Now whenever you download art like this, the first thing you want to do is go in and work out where everything is that you want. I'm going to turn off this top-most layer because that is this element down here. I don't need the background so I could turn off and even delete it. Now, there's still some elements in here that I don't want, so I'm going to open up the remaining layer here, which is the objects layer. Down here at the bottom of the objects layer appears to be the text here. I'm actually going to just drag that onto the trash can because that will allow me then to select the group and all that's left in the group are those floral elements. I'll choose Edit and then Copy. I'm going to create this in a brand new document, so I'll choose file and then new. Now I want to end up with a wreath that is basically square, but I also need some storage space for the elements that I'm bringing over. What I'm going to do is end up with a document's about 2,000 by 2,000 but I'm going to make it a little bit wider for now. I'm going to make it 3,200 by 2,000 and click "Create". Then I'll choose Edit and Paste, and I'll paste in the objects that I copied from the other document. I can enlarge them a little bit by holding the shift key and just dragging out to enlarge them, because they're vector objects, of course, they can be scaled without losing any quality. Now we're going to create a wreath, which will be basically a circular objects, am going to the Ellipse tool, I'll hold the Shift key as I drag out a circle and just move it into position. This will give me a rough guide as to what my circular wreath shape is going to help me design it. Now I want it to have a colored stroke, just any color will do and just thickened it up a little bit so that you can see it. You're not going to actually continue to use this in the wreath itself, so it will be deleted later on. Right now, so that we can keep things nice and neat, I'm going to work on layer 1, and just leave the objects on layer 2. I'm going to try and be pretty careful as I work that the actual wreath is going to be built on layer 1 so I could discard layer 2 later on. We're going to start with the green wreath. That's a good base for a wreath, is to start with the underlying pieces. I'll go over here and select this object. I'll choose Edit, Copy, and then Edit, Paste. Now it's being pasted into this other layer, so with it selected, I'm just going to drag it onto layer 1 so that we make sure that we're building this thing up on layer 1. Just make life a little bit easier. I'm going to move the green wreath over to the edge of the ellipse and then we're going to start rotating it around. For this I'll select the shape. I'll choose effect, distort and transform, and then transform. I'll turn preview on so I can see what I'm doing. I'm thinking probably I want about 10 or 11 of these leaves around. Let's just type 11 because that will give us 12 in total. Now, to get them to rotate around is a little bit of trial and error, but I really like this method because you don't have to commit to it until you've got it right. what I'm going to do is start by increasing the horizontal and vertical movement, and they're going to ultimately be the same amount. I'm thinking I'll start with 250 for horizontal and vertical. Now I'll take the angle up. I'm just going to start increasing the angle, and as I do that, you'll see that the shapes are all just rotating around and they're actually going to create ultimately, a circle. It's just that we might need to do a little bit of work with them. You can change the rotation point and that will change the way it looks. I've taken the rotation point here down to the middle bottom, and this is pretty much what I need for my wreath. It's just that it's not quite large enough. It's not quite filling up the shape. I'm going to take it up to maybe 270 and 270. Now, it's pretty much a circle and it's pretty much the same size as the circle that I drew as a guideline for my wreath. It's just not quite in the right position, that's not a problem that's going to be easy to solve. I'll click "Okay", and all I need to do is with this shape selected because this is a transform effect, It's just a shape that's got a transformation applied to it, I'm just going to move the shape down and across until the layers are all over the edge of my design. That's a really good starting point for my wreath. I've got a nice even set of green leaves going round the edge, and that's been created using that transform effect. Once you've got your greenery in place, the next thing that you want to do is to add the big elements. What we're going to do is use this flower. I'll Alt or Option drag a duplicate of it away. Not only because I want to keep the original in case I wanted to do something with it later, but also because I'm about to take a hatchet to this flower. I don't want the green layers, I really just want the flower here. I'm going to select the object, then I'm going to the eraser tool. With the eraser tool, I can just erase across the bottom of the flower here, and that will just break it apart. Now if I go into the group selection tool, because this is in a group, I can select over the top part of the flower, make sure that I've got all the elements and leave the layers behind. I'm going to choose Edit and then Cut. Now I didn't take quite all the places, I'm going to try that again. Now I'm going to choose Edit, Cut, and then I'll choose Edit, Paste because I want to break these objects apart. But you'll see that they are now individual objects, they're not grouped. Before I do anything, it's really important that I group this or I'm going to lose control over this shape entirely. I'll choose the object group. I suggest that as you're working on this wreath it's a really good idea to have your layers palette open so you can see what's going on. It's just too risky otherwise. Now I'm going to take this flower and rotate it. Basically what I want is three flowers around this shape. I want one here, one here, and one just over here. Three large flowers is a good way of creating some balance in your wreath. Odd numbers work better than even numbers and just spacing them evenly around the edge, but not quite. We'll add a little bit of variety and visual interest. This group up here is in the objects collection, we don't want it to be there, so I'm just going to drag it in to the layer that we're working on, and here it is, here. Now I can make a duplicate of it, Alt or Option drag it into position and then place it here in this side of the wreath, and I'm just going to rotate it a little bit. You could also re-size it maybe down just a little, just to add a bit of variety. I'll Alt or Option drag a third copy up here and rotate it around. Now it would be possible also to flip it horizontally or vertically with object transform reflect, and then choose either horizontal or vertical. Again, that will give a little bit of interest through the wreath. The next step is to add some filler elements, and what I'm looking for here is some leaves that could go in-between these other layers. I'm going to select this group of layers. I'll Alt or Option drag a duplicate away. I'm going to then Alt or Option drag to place these layers in position. Now, just going to place it in the gap here, rotate it a little bit into position, just using it as a filler, and just ensuring that it goes in the right layer, which it isn't so that we just drag it down into this layer. Of course, you can also adjust its placement. I've got it on top of the green layers, which I think is a good spot for it. But if you wanted it underneath the green layers, then you just drag it under the group here, which is this set of rotated layers. But as I said, I think it's better on top. Now that it's in this layer, I can select it and Alt or Option drag a duplicate away, and I'll just continue to do that to fill in some spaces. Now for this one, I might reflect it first, so let me just make another duplicate and reflect one of these. Because this will give me some leaf shapes that will go the opposite way. Again, adding a little bit of variety while still maintaining some consistency of color and placement, but a little bit of variety in terms of the direction that it's going in. Once I've created this one, I can also use it to take elsewhere in the design. Now, I'm not going to fill up all the gaps because I've got some other elements that I could use. One of the elements I'm looking at is this one here. Again, I'll Alt or Option drag it duplicate away. I'm going to make sure that it's now positioned in the layer that I'm working in, and let's go and add it to the design. I'm just making some duplicates over as I go, and then I'll add it to the design. I'm just using it to fill up a few gaps. Now if you want to take just part of this you can, so we could take off the back bit and just remove it. I'm going to select the object, and go to the Eraser tool, and I'm just going to erase out this area. Then I'll go to the Group Selection Tool, and I'm going to select these objects and just remove them. That leaves me with a shape that smaller again. Again, it's got that same look to the other elements in the design, but this one is just a little bit different. Let's select over it, and we'll place that in the design as well. I'm going to reflect this one horizontally so that it looks a little bit different to the other one. Now we could also use these flowers, or these flowers, that doesn't really matter. I'm thinking that I might do something with this set of flowers. I'm just going to duplicate it. I'm going to zoom in so that I can see what I'm looking at here. I'm going to the Group Selection Tool because these elements are all in a group, and what I want to do is to break some bits out. What I'm going to do is select over these stems here. What I'm trying to do is break this into just a set of flowers rather than anything that has stems in it. These are going to be nice little filler accents, so let's just go and select them. Here they are in this top layer, but we want them in the layer that we're actually working on. I'll just move them into that layer. Now I'm just going to take the three of them, and place them at intervals around the design. You could even break those up further into single elements that you place in various areas. Just be aware that things that are in threes work better generally than things that are in twos. Whether they be big or little, they're just going to be a bit more interesting if they're are odd numbers rather than even numbers. Let's take this final set as a set of elements so we can use. Again moving it into the group that we're working in and the layer that we're working in, let's make a duplicate. Let's Transform this one with the Reflection Transformation so that it points in a different direction. Now this is a pretty large object, I'm going to just scale it down a little bit to make it a bit smaller. I'm actually going to use it to replace some of these red leaves. I think it's a little bit too much to have all of it, but I really like having some bursts of red color around here. I think I'll take this set of leaves out as well. I also have a very small element up here that I really like, which is just a single bud. I'm going to add it in a few places around the design. But I'm also going to make a reflected version of it as well. Here I'm just reflecting it horizontally. I'm going to make a copy which will give me two shapes rather than one. I'm going to strategically place this into position in a few places around the design. Once you've got everything pretty much in position, you can turn off the Objects Layer, and anything that shouldn't have been on there is going to be immediately apparent, and there are this bits I haven't actually bought into the correct layer. Let me just go and grab at those, make sure I've got them in the correct layer. I'm just checking with my eye, I'm looking at the wreath here, and saying if anything changes when I turn the visibility off, this top objects layer on or off. The only thing that appears to me to be missing is the Ellipse. That's the guided line we had for the design. I don't actually need that. That's fine that that's being turned off. Just making one final check. Looks like I can get rid of the objects I don't need them any longer. I have a loose object over here, then I'm going to delete as well. I now have my basic wreath shape. At this point I would just zoom in, and just have a look around the wreath, and just make sure that the alignment of things is correct. For example I might come to one of these objects, perhaps this one here, and just adjust it a little bit to tuck it in alongside the greenery. It looks like it's coming out of there rather than just sitting in mid here. You could come round here, and just adjust these shapes should you wish to do so. If you want to get access to the green elements, then they're not accessible right now because they're still transformed objects. When we go to select this particular group, you'll see that only one object is selectable because it's got that transform effect on it. Let's go to Appearance panel, we turn the Transform effect off, we lose all our green elements. Well if you want access to those, you're going to need to select the green object that we rotate it, and then choose Object, Expand Appearance. That will create a group that is full of little objects, and every one of these is a leaf. Once you've done that, you'll be able to get access to the individual leaf segments. I suggest you use the Group Selection Tool because it's made to select objects that are inside groups. Let's go and select this one here. We can click here to select the entire object once we know which one it is. Then if we go to the Selection Tool, we can then manipulate it. You can actually kick this out of its exact alignment once you can find out where it is, and actually move it into the position you want it in. You want to progress through the wreath having a look at all of these elements, and just making sure they're in the correct position. This one here would probably look better if it was underneath the flower itself, so let's just find it here, and I'm going to move it underneath the flower. Let's just drag it all the way down until it's tucked underneath the flowers instead of being on top of the flowers. You can also adjust the layer placement of these objects, and just make sure that they're sitting way you want them to sit inside the arrangement. Now, I wanted initially to have a 2000 by 2000 pixel document but I needed a bit of extra space. Let's go to the Artboard here. I'm going to double-click on it, and I'm just going to change the width down to 2000 by 2000 and click "OK." Now I can grab my art, and I'll do this by pressing Control or Command A, and then just move it into position in the Artboard. We can finish this element off with some text. For this I'm going to type, Happy Mother's Day, I'm going to enlarge the font size so I can see what I'm doing here. I'm going to select an appropriate font to use. For this I think a script star font would be a good choice. I'm just going to say what I've got. I'm going to use this one for now. But you can obviously choose a nice script font, or a nice font that will go with the design that you've created from your collection. Now, this needs to be centered I think. I'm going to tap on "Align center." I'm also going to close up the spacing between this text, it's way too big. I'm going to the Characters panel, and I'm going to adjust the letting. It obviously needs to be much bigger than 72, but much less than the 300 that was. I'm just going to adjust it using Shift and the up arrow, and I've dropped us down to about 240. But I think also my font size could be a bit larger, so I'm going to take that out a little bit, and maybe adjust the letting having done that. Now for the text color, I want to use a color from the art. First of all, I'm going to the Eyedropper Tool. I'm just going to select a color to you. I'm just pressing and holding the left mouse button at the same time as I'm looking at the select driver here just to see what color I've chosen. I'm looking for something probably about that red. Having created that red, I'm going to the Swatches panel, and I'm just going to click here on "New Swatch," and press "Enter." That's just going to create that as a new swatch. Now I can come and select over my text. I'm going to double-click here, and I'm going to choose a color swatch, and it's going to be at the end of this set of colors. If you just roll down, we're going to find our new color swatch here. It is here, then click "OK." Now, the beauty of creating this color swatch as a global color is because it's got this little triangle on the bottom, as if I don't like its color, I can just adjust that. I'm going to double-click on the Global Color Swatch, and that will open the Swatch Options. For this I want to darken it a little bit. I'm going to select Hue, Saturation, Brightness because that's a good way of adjusting the brightness or darkness. You'll see that if I turn preview on, I can preview what the color is going to look like because everything that uses this global color will be adjusted automatically, and it's being adjusted even though I don't have that text selected because the text was colored with that global swatch color, then I can watch the changes to it in this dialogue without having to select it. Of course anything else that was colored with that same color would also be adjusting at the same time. That's the bonus of using global colors. There's the first of our floral designs created using our downloaded art. 3. Create a Heart Shape Design: The next floral element that we're going to create, we're going to use this floral elements. Again, I'm going to give you the download link for this. But before we start, we're going to create a brand new document to work in, I'll choose File and New, and this is going to be a simple square document, 2,000 by 2,000 pixels in size. Now for this, we're going to create a heart-shaped, so I'm going to the Pen Tool, but you could just as easily use the Pencil Tool should you wish to do so. I'm going to click and drag with the pen tool up towards the top left of the document. Going to click again about opposite where I started, and I'm going to click just below where I started. Now this does not have to be set in concrete. This is just a very simple heart shape, well it's half of a heart shape. I'm just going to tweak the first half of it by just adjusting the nodes on this shape, I'm going to select the entire shape. This is really important that you select it all with the Selection Tool because this next step is not going to work perfectly if you don't. We'll then choose Object Transform and Reflect. I'm going to reflect over the vertical and I'm going to make a copy. Now I've just seen that I've got a fill on these shapes, so I'm going to select both shapes and turn off the fill. Now I can select just the shape that I created the second time. Drag it into position holding the Shift key as I do, and just making sure that this now creates a heart-shape. Now, I'm not really happy with how fat the heart is. I think I want something that looks a bit more like this. Now, we're not going to do anything special with this like try and join it up. All I'm looking for is a general guide as to what a heart looks like so that I can get my shapes into position as we work. Here in the last pallet, I'm actually just going to lock down this layer, so that it won't move. I'm going to add a brand new layer and we're going to put out elements on this. For this, we're going back to this design. I'm going to select this shape here. Now, it's probably in a group, so let's just go and find it and we're going to copy it. Let's come back to our document. I'm going to select Layer 2. I'm going to choose Edit and then Paste. Now I'm getting an error message here. I'm going to click No, and I'm going to the Layers palette. I'm going to I click this fly-out menu and I'm going to disable Paste Remembers Layers. The problem with what I was about to do was that the flower came from Layer 1 in this document, and when you have Paste Remembers Layers selected, then it wants to paste this onto layer one in the new document. We had locked layer one down and so it won't let you do it. Let's go back and select Layer 2 and choose Edit and then paste and it happily goes in position. It's just a heads up if you have that selection in your Layers palette paste, remember the flare, sometimes that's handy, sometimes it's not. I'm going to take my shape and I'm going to start moving it into position and rotating it. Now, just going to start with the pointy end of the flower at the bottom of the heart here. I'll rotate it and drag it into position. Then I'm going to make a duplicate by Alt and dragging on the shape, and I'll put the second one in. This one, I'll probably won't underneath the first, so I'm just going to drag it, so it's going to appear from underneath this leaf. I'm going to Alt or Option drag the next one. This is where we're going to start running into problems, because the flower is not going to bend. Well, it's not bent right now. It is going to bend in just a minute because we're going to make it bend. I'm going to zoom into this area of the heart so I can see things clearly. I'm going to select the shape that I am working with. I'm going to come over here to the Puppet Warp Tool. It's sharing a toolbar position with the Free Transform Tool. You want the Puppet Warp tool. When we select the Puppet Warp Tool, you might already see a pin in place. This is a pin that you can move or rotate the shape using, so the concept of the Puppet Warp tool is that it puts a sort of grid over things and you get to put pins into the shapes. Pins will either lock things down or they will serve as a position that you can move from. The same pin does two different things, so it locks and it also moves. Having put the pin in, I'm going to now start moving this across. I'm going to take this pin and move it into position. I can come down here and put another pin into the shape, and that allows me to move this area into position. By adding pins and then by moving based on the pin, you can bend this flower around the edge of the heart. Having done that, I'm going to move it below the other objects because I want it to tuck in behind the other layers of the heart. I'm going again to hold the Alt or Option key, going to re-select a straight branch and Alt or option drag it away. This one, I'm also going to bend again using the Puppet Warp Tool. You want to position it roughly where you want It. Then go to the Puppet Warp tool and start putting in your pins. You don't have to get all the pins in to start off with. You can just bring the pins that you need when you need them. We need one final copy, Alt or option drag this away, rotate it round, workout where it's going to go and this is way too long, so I'm actually going to cut it off. Let's just go to the Knife Tool and I'm going to determine which bit I want. I'm going to cut through here, so with the knife tool, I'll just drag through there. [inaudible] can't get the knife tool to snap or make it a straight line. It really is whatever you get, and so you just want to have a fairly steady hand while you're using it. Now I'm going to select these elements that were one side of the knife line and just delete them, can use the group selection tool to select them. You can also use the Lasso Tool. Now, I've got a smaller piece of greenery, I'm going to position it roughly where I want it to be, zoom in, go back to the Puppet Warp tool and, start putting the pins in that I need and moving the shape using these pins. You put your pin down and then let go and then start moving with it. It's a two-step process if you like, and remember that the same pin does two things. It locks down an object it also acts as the rotation point for that object. If you add a pin where you didn't mean to just press Control or Command Z and that will just undo it. If you want to rotate a shape, you can use this outer edge to rotate it. Think that's pretty good. I am just going to make sure that it is underneath all the previous shapes. I'll now make a selection of all of these objects because that's half of a heart. I'll choose object transform and then reflect. I'm going to reflect over the vertical and I wanted a copy, so I want the original plus a copy and I'm going to start moving this copy into position. Now before I let go this copy, I want it to be a little bit smaller. So I'm just going to drag in on it slightly and rotate it a little bit. So I don't want this to be a perfect heart. I'm going to lose one of these leaves in a minute and I'm going to fall short in this area in a minute too. So let's just click away from this, right now I think I can turn off the layer that actually has the heart drawing on it. That's not going to be of much help now. Let's come in here and let's select over this set of leaves. I think I'm going to cut the end of the stem here. So I'll go to the knife tall and just be very careful that I'm only cutting through this one shape. Come back to the group selection tool and just select over the bit that I just cut off. Let's go back now and choose the puppet warp tool. Going to put a pin in at the end here and just maneuver this leaf in, to just finish the shave off nicely at the bottom. Now this leaf structure is above the leaf at the bottom. I think it's going to look much better if it's below it. So I'll just drag it down in the last stack. I'm going to try and get this leaf to bend out, and I think this leaf belongs to this plot which it does. So I'm going to select that pace of plant. I'm going to zoom in here. I'll go to the puppet warp tool. I'm going to click on this leaf to put a pin in, and I'll put a pin in here to stop this movement and I'll put a pin in here to stop this moving, and just try and drag this leaf around a little bit. Just so it creates an element at the bottom of the heart. It's looking pretty good down the bottom, maybe a little bit of finessing on this shape that's behind everything. This one here. Up the top here, I want to stop this overlapping looks. I'm going to zoom in here and just sort out this problem. I'm going to select this shape here and go for this large leaf. Walked down the bits so I don't want to move, which will allow me access to the leaf that I do want to move. Now I had thought to remove this extra leaf, but I think I'm actually going to use it. I'm just going to offset it a little bit. The leaf I think I will get rid of is the one at the very back here. So let's go to this shape. It would be hard for me to lock everything else down right now so that the knife tool is not going to attack anything except the shape that I want to it to attack. Go to the knife tool and I'm just going to run the knife through this here. Go to the group-selection tool and select all of the elements that I just cut off and just remove them. This is looking really good sci-fi, I'm really pleased with how it's looking. I'm just going to unlock everything that I need to keep it locked down. We've got lots of other elements in this basic design that we can use to add a bit of interests and it's time now to do just that. I'm going to the group selection tool, I'm just going to select in here to work out where this flag is, in it copy go back to our design and edit, paste or control or command v. Going to just re-size this flower a little bit and start placing it in locations around the heart. Again, we'll want to go for odd numbers, and you can also rotate it so that it doesn't look quite as structured. So it's not looking exactly the same in all the places that you're putting it. I've got five of these flowers in position. That's a good number, an odd number always works much better. I'm also going to use this shape here. So let's just say if I can select it, I've got it there, copy it, and paste it into this document. It's got too much of a stork on it. Again, I'm going to attack it with the knife tool. I'm just going to take the bottom part of the stalk off, go back with the group selection tool to select the bit that I want to remove. Finds it down just a little bit. Place two or three of us around the basic heart shape. The last element I'm going to use is this one. The ones that I'm avoiding are this one because it really is a different color green and it just shows up on the heart and it doesn't work with the other shapes. This one is a little bit too bushy, and so I'm just choosing this life because it seems to go pretty well with these color wise. It's a pretty good match. For this leaf, I'm going to place it behind everything else so it's coming from the back rather than from the front. With elements that are behind other elements, you might find it easier to select it using the layers palette, then try and select it with your mouse. So it's just a nice little filler element that adds a little bit more depth into the design. So once you're happy with the heart-shaped that you've got, it's time to add some text to it. I'm just going to use the word love here. So I'm going to top it with a leading capital letter. Lets just make it really big. I'm going to select a font and I'm using Alex brush here as the font. It's just a nice little font. It might be nice as some of the elements here, for example, these flowers came over the top of the word, and so what I would do is locate the word in the last pallet and drag it underneath those flat elements. Now this flower, it might be nice if it went underneath. So I'm going to grab it and put it under the word love and hope that that doesn't upset too much of the rest of the design. So we're weaving it into this design a little bit. I'm going to sample a red color that I'm going to use for my text. I'm just sampling it with the eyedropper. I'll add it to the swatches palette like we did last time. Let's just add it in as a new global swatch. Select the text and select this as the color. Now for this word, I'm going to add a very slight shadow to it. I do that by selecting the text and choose effect stylize, and then drop shadow. So I've got a drop shadow that's black, that's fine. I've got it set to multiply, which is the ideal blend mode for a drop shadow. But I'm dropping the opacity. The default is about 75 percent. I've got an opacity of about 25 percent. The rest of the settings here actually the default settings and they seem to work pretty well. So I'll click ''Okay'' There is our finished element. This time we've created a heart shape. We drew the heart and then we bent the laze around it using that very handy puppet warp tool, which does a really good job of bending things when you don't have things that are bent the right direction. 4. Create a Spray of Flowers: This next floral design is going to be a spray of flowers. We're going to use a slightly different technique to create this one. I'll choose "File" and then "New". I'm going to create a document which is 1920 by 1080 in size, but yours can be any size as long as it's this long rectangle. Now we're going to use this particular design set. Again, I'm going to give you the link to download this. We're going to start with this object here, so I'm just clicking on it to selected. I'll choose "Edit Copy". We'll go back to the document we're working in and choose "Edit" and then "Paste". I'm going to rotate this around so that it is a little bit more horizontal. I'm going to use this as the main element of the design. So it's marking out what half the design is going to look like. I want to reflect it over here. But because a lot of these elements are also going to be reflected, it's going to be a lot easier if I actually get illustrated to do the grunt work for me. So I'm going to the last pallet and what I'm going to do here is, well firstly, make this a bit larger so you can see what we're doing to start off with. I'm going to select the layer. This is really important that you don't just select the group that you're actually selecting the new layer because we're about to do a reflection on the layer. So I'll choose then "Effect", "Distort" and "Transform", and then transform. I'm going to turn "Preview" on so I can see what's happening. I'm going to make one copy. That will be the original plus one copy. I'm going to tap "Reflect X". Now that's giving me the reflection, but the two pieces are over the top of each other and that's because of this selection here. There are nine little boxes. I'm going to click the one in the middle on the right hand side. This gives us our reflection. So now anything that we add in this layer that we're working in on this side of the image is going to be reflected over the other side. It just makes things a little bit easier to create. Let's go and get the next element, which is going to be this leaf. I'm going to copy it and come in here, make sure I'm in this layer and I'm going to paste it in position. Now, you'll say that it's pushing everything out of the way, but that's because it's in the wrong spot. So I'm just going to move it out of the way. I just want this element here to be the rightmost pace. I don't want anything to come further. However, or as soon as I do that, I'm going to break the design. Just be aware of that. I'm going to just size this one down a little bit, and place that to fill in a little bit of this design. Now I want it to be underneath so I'll drag it underneath the other objects so that the other object is more on top. I'm going to make another couple of this. So I'll "Alt" or "Option Drag" a duplicate away. This one I'm going to transform, so I'll go to "Transform", "Reflect". I'm going to reflect it over the horizontal and I'm going to make a copy. So that'll give me two more shapes, each going in a different direction. This one I'm going to put up here. So again, rotating it around, shrinking it a little bit, holding the "Shift key" as I do so that I don't distort it. Just being careful to tuck it underneath an element that is on this previous set of leaves so that all of these big leaves are underneath the main leaf, but they're also joining it as if they could be realistically joined to it. Let's go and get this flower here. I'm just going to paste it into position again, it's breaking the design. That's fine. We expected that to happen. If you get transformed boxes that are off center like this, you can make them on center. So you can go to "Object", "Transform", and then reset bounding box. That just makes it upright. So you can do that to any shape, anytime. I'm thinking I've probably got a bit too much stem here, so let's just take the knife tool to it and just wipe off the bottom part of the stem. The next elements I want to be outside of this reflection. Now the entire layer is a reflected layer. So I'm going to add a new layer to the document. Let's go back and get this flower. I'm going to copy it and paste it into this document, but making sure that it goes on to layer two. Of course, if you had that "Paste Remembers Layers" option turned on, then you wouldn't be able to do that and put it on this new layer by just pasting it. That's an important setting to make sure is disabled. I'm going to place this flower in position. It's not going to be reflected because the only things that are reflected on this layer, everything that's on a layer apart from that layer won't be reflected. Let's go back and let's grab this leaf again. I'm going to make a fan of three of these leaves. So I'm going to take this one and reflect it vertically and make a copy of it at the same time. So I've got two. Let's make a third one, but let's hit that with the "Puppet Warp" tool. But I just want to straighten it out a little bit. Now with the "Puppet Warp" tool on something that's got lines on it like this, the less number of pins you put and the less amount of work you do to it, the more realistic it's going to be if you try and put too many pins in and try and work it too much, you run the risk of it going really wobbly and so you're going to lose the effect. We grab all three of these, just re-size them a little bit and place them at the back of the flower. Now, at the moment there on top of the flower, but that's an easy solution. We're going to grab all three of them and move them underneath the flower. Then I'll take a couple of these, "Alt"or option, drag them away, rotate them, make them a bit smaller, and use them to finish off the design. By utilizing the reflection tool it illustrated, we can easily create an element that has lots of reflected elements in it, but also make sure that some elements that we don't want to be reflected aren't reflected. 5. Create a Rectangle Panel: The next element that we're going to create is going to look a little bit like the one you're seeing on the screen here. We're going to start with a brand new document, one that is wider than it is tall. I'm making mine 1920 by 1080, I'll click "Create". I'm going to start by drawing my rectangle, so I'm going to the Rectangle Tool. I'm going to make sure it's white filled and that it has a black stroke for now. I'll just drag out a rectangle and position it pretty much in the center of the screen. Now we're going to assemble this illustration so that most of our elements will be underneath this rectangle. Let's go to the floral elements set that I'm using, and I'll give you the download link for this. I'm going to select all these pieces and copy and paste them into the document we're working in. Because these are vectors, I can just resize them down so that they're really small and then I can make them larger later on. You will, however, want to make sure that you have the Shift key selected when you're resizing them because you don't want to skew them out of proportion. I'm bringing out the main leaf element that I'm going to use. I'm going to start placing it in position. I want a couple of versions of this, I want one that's pointing in this direction, one pointing in the opposite direction. I'll choose Object, Transform, Reflect. I'm going to transform it vertically and I'm going to click "Copy" so that I get the original and a duplicate. That's just going to give me a little bit more flexibility. Every time I need a new one of these, I'll just Alt or Option drag a duplicate away. We've got a lot of filler elements that we can use so you don't want to be filling up the outside too much. You just want to add some elements just for variety, but allow yourself plenty of room to add additional elements in later on. I've got these elements spaced out for the moment. I'm going to move the rectangle above everything. The rectangle is going to be at the very base of the document, it's down here. I'll just grab it and move it up to the very top of this layer so it's above everything else. We can get an idea as to how everything is placed. At this point, I might want to move these around but probably you don't want to spend a lot of time on that right now until you've got the other elements in place. Now the other leaf element that I want to use is this one. Let's just resize it. Now the transform box on this as not square, so I'm just going to square it up with Object, Transform, Reset Bounding Box. Again, I'm going to make a duplicate of this that's going the opposite direction. We're going to flip it over the vertical, click "Copy". Of course, Option or Alt drag a duplicate away so that you can make one of these into multiples. Now if you find like I just did that your rectangle moves just lock it down so that it can't move. If you want to make a duplicate of two shapes at once, just hold the Shift key as you select the second one and then Alt or Option drag a full set of these away. I've just placed these loosely in position, I'm going to be finessing that a little bit later once I've got some flowers in. For the flowers, I'm going to choose this flower, I'm going to use it or just enlarge it a little bit. I'll use it in a couple of places, up here and down at the very bottom of the illustration. I'm going to need to flip it so that we're getting the petals and the stamens of the flower pointing out. We want to be able to see those. This flower too I'm going to use, again, just moving it into position, just resizing it if it needs it. Holding the Shift key so that we strain those proportions. Just spreading a few of these around the document. This flower I'm also going to use just enlarge it a little bit, rotate it. Finally, I'll use this flower in a couple of places around the corner. Now, I'm thinking for the corner, I'm going to move these three flowers above everything else. Let's just go and locate this flower. I'm going to move it above the rectangle and so too with this one and with this one here in the back. Now you don't have to do that if you would prefer everything was behind the rectangle, then just don't move these above everything. I just think it looks more interesting for me to have an element that's actually over the corner of the rectangle. Now, once you've got your flowers in position, you can see what's happening with your leaves and then you can start moving them. For these, you're probably going to have to move them further out than you thought they would be because they're supposed to add some visual interest. When they too close to the rectangle, they're just losing out, they're not really as stunning or as visual as they should be. You might find that you need some more flowers and that's fine, just fill in the gaps with some extra flowers. Consider the layering of your objects, you probably want these larger leaf elements to be behind the flowers so just make sure that that's the case and if not, just move them into position. When you're happy with the results, you can get rid of the excess objects if you don't going to use them, so I'm just going to select and delete them. I also want to make sure that the outside border on this rectangle matches the elements that are in the floral display. For that I'm going to go and sample a color to use. I want a dark brown. Once I've got my dark brown, I'm going to add it to the swatches panel. Now I can go and select the rectangle again. Let's just unlock it so that we can select it. Then for its stroke color, we're going to use the color that we've just added to the swatches panel. I'll increase its weight a little bit. If you haven't already done so now would be a really good time to save this file, because what we're going to do next is look and see how we would recolor this artwork, given that it's got a very fall or autumn field to it. What if we wanted to give it a brighter, almost spring feel? Well, the first thing I'm going to do is select three flowers that are all identical so that I can recolor it step-by-step. I'm going to choose View and I'm going to select Hide Edges because that way I can see my flowers as I'm working. Now, typically I would use the recolor artwork tool for this, but there are lots of colors in this artwork and there is an easier way to achieve a similar result. I'm going to Edit and then Edit Colors and I'm going to select Adjust Color Balance. Because I'm working in an RGB document it gives me the red, green, and blue channels, I'm going to turn Preview on. Now it's important to know the opposites of these colors. If you're going to add red to a element, you're going to push in the red direction, and that adds red. But if you drag in the negative direction, then you're going to add the opposite of red, which is cyan. So you're going to get this greenish look to your flowers. For green, you'll go in a positive direction to add green and you'll go in a negative direction to add the opposite of green, which is magenta. Then with blue you'll go in one direction, in a positive direction to add blue. The other direction is adding yellow because yellow is the opposite of blue. Knowing this, you can start tweaking your colors. I want to get into a pink, magenta look for this set of flowers and so I'm looking at adding some red, adding some magenta, which is the opposite of green, and also adding some yellow perhaps, or even some blue I'm not too sure about what I'm going to do in the blue, yellow probably add a bit of blue to get into a little bit of purple. Once I'm happy with those flowers, I'll click "Okay". Then I'll select the next set of flowers. The flowers that are all the same flower. If you're not sure that you've got all of those you might want to open the layers palette and just double-check. Let's choose Edit, Edit Colors, and then Adjust Color Balance. You can test to see that you have got all the flowers by just taking one of these sliders really hard in one direction. So you can do a quick visual check that in fact, you've got all the flowers of a single type. Now let's go and just work on these. I'm looking for a similar color palette and just making sure that the flowers and I've already colored are all in the same color palette. Once you've finished with the flowers, you can go ahead and work on the greenery. Well, what is going to become greenery. In this instance, we do want to take the greenery towards green, and so I'm going to adjust the green slider in a positive direction. If I wanted bluer a green, then I'm going to drag the red slider in a negative direction to add cyan. This is blue as well so you can add blue by dragging the blue slider in a positive direction. You may need to experiment with these sliders. It might be counter-intuitive to go in one direction or the other, particularly when you're trying to find a good place for greenery, because sometimes it's not totally obvious as to which direction you should be taking these colors. Using the Edit Colors Dialogue is a really good way of changing the colors in a piece of art like this where the artwork itself is really complex. Once you've done that, then you can have another look at the arrangement and just finesse that. You can of course, take a copy of any of these elements and it's going to be the recolored element and so it's going to be easy to add it back into the illustration. When you've finished doing your recoloring, you'll want to use File and then Save As so that you can save this as a different name document because that will give you two different color versions of your piece of art. You'll also want to turn those edges back on, so make sure you come into View and choose Show Edges so that when you make selections in future, you're actually going to be able to see those selections. 6. Project and Wrapup: We've now completed the video component of the class, so now it's over to you. Your class project will be to take one or more of these designs and reproduce it yourself. Now you can use the same elements as I use, or you can use other elements that you sourced online. If you're looking vector AZ is a really good place to start. Once you've completed your piece of art, post it as your class project. Now as you are watching these videos, you will have seen a prompt which asked if you would recommend this class to others. Please, if you enjoyed this class and learned from it, would you do two things for me. Firstly, answer yes, that you do recommend the class, and secondly, complete the on-screen review. These reviews really help other students to say that this is a class that they too might enjoy and learn from. If you see the follow link on the screen, that's because you aren't following me yet. Click it to keep up to date with my new classes as they're released. As always, if you'd like to leave me a comment or a question, please do so. I read and I respond to all of your comments and questions, and I look out and I respond to all of your class projects. My name's Helen Bradley. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of graphic design for lunch, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon.