Do you love that you can quickly create floral shapes with Affinity Designer, but sometimes want something a little less perfect... less "vectory"?

Do you wish you could add a more hand drawn feel to your vector florals, while still benefitting from Designer's built in shapes? Or, perhaps you'd like to create your own, unique floral assets for your illustrations, surface patterns and graphic design projects...

What if I told you that you could create beautiful vector flower, leaf and even vase shapes, using the built in shapes and tools in Affinity Designer, and still give them an organic, textural, uniquely you feel?

Want to know how? Welcome to class!

Hey everyone!

I'm Tracey, an artist, surface pattern designer and Top Teacher here on Skillshare.

If I say, I love working with vectors for their infinite scalability, and that you can change their color and size with a single click, but sometimes they're a bit too, "vectory." You know what I mean, right?

Don't get me wrong. Flat vectors play an important part in many of my designs, and I love that I can create fun florals in Designer in less time than it takes to say Sasquatch. Sometimes, though, especially when I'm creating illustrations, I want something a little more organic, something more textural... something a little less, "vectory."

In this intermediate level class, I'm going to show you how you can efficiently and effectively create floral shapes in Designer and add beautiful, organic texture to them, giving them a more illustrative feel.

We'll start by taking a look at what I call the, "Creative Helpers." The tools that help you create and organize your shapes. We'll look at...

Multiple ways to Power Duplicate fills and strokes to quickly create floral shapes.
How Symbols can help you quickly create, and adjust multi petal florals, allowing you to create them in less time.
The difference between Groups, Destructive Joins and Compounds, and the pros and cons of each,
How the Assets studio is not only a powerful tool to organize your complete floral shapes but can also help quickly build a library of floral, "parts," that you can combine in future illustrations and designs.
How to use the Appearance Panel to build up dimension on a single layer.
How to use the Style Picker tool to quickly copy color, fills, strokes, and more to multiple shapes and,
How to use the Contour Tool, to create unique shapes for your florals, or create an offset when you need to, "bulk up," your shapes.

Next, we'll get down to creating our shapes, and I'll show you two of my favorite ways to create flower, leaf and vase shapes in Designer. We'll explore...

How to use special control nodes, built in to Designer's built in shapes, to create beautiful floral shapes simply by dragging a series of nodes and,
I'll also walk you through the basics of using Pressure Settings, as well as various pitfalls when using pressure settings and show you how to either avoid them, or fix them, when you can't.
How you can use those same pressure settings in multiples to add a hand drawn feel to the shapes you create with them.
We'll use what we learn about pressure settings to create beautiful, organic, flower, leaf and even vase shapes.

In part three of the class, we'll bring our florals to life with texture and dimension. I'll show you...

How Warp Groups can be used singularly, or in multiples, to add a bit of, "wonkiness," to our too perfect shapes, giving them a more natural feel.
How to use both the Fill tool and the Vector Flood Fill tool to quickly add gradients and texture from the Stock studio, external folders, and the Assets studio.
How you can use built in, or imported, vector texture brushes to add an even more organic feel to your floral shapes and,
How to DRAW with single stroke textures using the Pen and Pencil tool

Throughout the class, we'll create several flower, vase and leaf shapes and, when you're done, you'll be able to go on to create your own, beautiful vector florals quickly, and efficiently, without losing that fun, hand drawn, organic feel.

Plus, everything you learn in this class can be applied to any vector shapes you create in Affinity Designer!

When you take this class, you will receive:

My Floral Color Burst Color Palette, created just for this class. The palette includes tons of vibrant colors (along with with tints and shades) that can be used to create beautiful flower, leaf and vase shapes.
A fun vector stamen brush I created just for this class that will allow you to turn any stroke in to beautiful stamens to add to your flower shapes.
My Floral Color Burst Texture Set: a set of 70 of my handmade, gel plate textures that can be used in their original color format, or black and white, to add beautiful texture and dimension to your floral illustrations. I'll also show you, in class, how you can add simple adjustments to change their color to suite your exact needs.

While this class is beginner friendly, it is intended for intermediate users of Affinity Designer. While I will walk you, step by step, through each process, it is recommended that you have familiarity with Designer's interface and where tools are located.

This class is for anyone who wants to take deeper dives in to the various tools that will allow you to create beautiful vector floral, leaf and vase shapes, with a hand drawn feel.

Affinity Designer for Desktop or iPad
- I'll be using the most up to date version of the V2 software so if you have not yet upgraded, there may be parts you will not be able to follow.
- For those on the iPad version, while I will be teaching the class on the desktop version, I will note any differences between the two. You will, however, need a working knowledge of where the tools are located.
An Apple Pencil or other stylus
- While a pressure sensitive stylus isn't necessary, it is easier to create the shapes we'll cover in class using some sort of stylus.

I will be teaching the class in V2 of the desktop version of the app, however iPad users are welcome, as I will be noting any differences between how the desktop and iPad versions perform the steps I show you. (Please note, many of the tools I will be showing are only available in V2 of the application.)

Hi there! I'm Tracey. I'm an illustrator, designer, and photographer located in the Chicagoland area. You can find more information about me, and my work in my full profile. (find the link above) I've been a full time artist for over a decade, after leaving the corporate world behind in 2011. In addition to teaching, I am a full time creator who sells my work on my own site, as well as print on demand sites like Spoonflower, Society6, Etsy and more.

I've been using Affinity products for the last several years and love to learn as much as I can about the tools so I can not only use them the way they were intended to work but make them work for me; and I love sharing that knowledge with my students! I've had the privilege of being spotlighted by Serif, the company who created the app, twice as a go to teacher for their apps. You can find links to the spotlight articles on my profile page.

If you have any questions about the class, or would like feedback on your project, please feel free to let me know in the Discussion section of class, or by emailing me at hello@traceycapone.com.

I look forward to seeing you in class!

Music Credit: "The Calling," by Balloon Planet on artlist.io

Chris VanDerMaas

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