Have you ever sat and doodled flowers on your sketchpad, scanned them in, cleaned them up, smoothed them out and then made brushes with them or vectorized them?
Me too and it's a lengthy process—even though the results can be truly one-of-a-kind. But if you are in a hurry to create some cool looking flowers with Illustrator and your Wacom, then follow me!
Note: I've included an Illustrator file with everything shown here so you could follow along on this tutorial. You can download it here.
First, open up a working space in Illustrator and using your mouse or Wacom, draw a petal. This can be anything you want. It doesn't even have to be a traditional flower petal like the one I drew below. Think outside the box!
Next, select the Rotate Tool from your Illustrator Toolbox...
Then, click on the very bottom center of your petal, until you see the cross-hair of the Rotate tool.
Now this is where the REAL fun begins! With the Rotate Tool selected, click on the bottom center of your petal. Next, holding down the Alt/Option key, click anywhere at the top area of the petal and pull down to right. Don't get frustrated if it takes you a few tries to get it. If you miss or something doesn't work right, just start over. Remember to click the rotate tool again and then click in the center of your petal and try again! It acutally took me a few minutes to get this the first time I tried!
Note: If you want an exact angle, also hold down the shift key (while holding the alt/opt and dragging). This will give you and exact measurement.
Once you've duplicated this first petal, simply hit Command (or Ctrl) D to repeat this transition. Keep hitting Command+D to duplicate and rotate your petals all the way around, until you are finshed and have the look you want.
When you're done, try changing the colors or adding some finishing touches to your flower!
Isn't that fun!? It can get addicting! This is how I created my doodle snowflakes as well...
Here, I used a simple leaf from my All For Fall Element Pack and repeated the process...
This time I did hold down the Shift Key, in addition to the Alt/Opt key to make sure I was keeping the angle contrained.
On this next flower, I did NOT hold down the shift key and just kept repeating the rotation/duplication (Cmd-D) to make a more imperfect flower.
Last I went back in and randomly recolored some of the petals and added a center flower for visual interest.
Making flowers, or snowflakes this way is a really fun and fast way to create some unique artwork that you can use over and over again!
Nancie
