In this adobe illustrator tutorial, I will demonstrate how to draw a beautiful vector flower plant illustration using combination of simple shapes, pluck and bloat effect and gradients. Next we will use brush tool to create more instances of the flower. Hope this flower tutorial will teach you some useful techniques on drawing flowers.
Drawing the Flower Petals
1. Start a new document with RGB color mode. Next, draw a polygon using Polygon Tool with pink to white radial gradient with 3px stroke width. I use (251, 214, 219) for pink and black for the stroke color.
2. Apply Pucker and Bloat effect from effect menu. Move the slider to 200% bloat. Then expand the object from menu Object > Expand appearance while the object is selected.
3. Convert the stroke to shape using Object > Path > Outline stroke, and apply purple (128, 29, 127) to white radial gradient starting from the middle of the object.
4. Select all the shapes we have created and drag them to symbol panel. Choose graphic on the symbol options pop up window and click OK. This step will create a new symbol from the object we just created.
5. Now let’s start to create more flower petals by spraying with the Symbol Spray Tool. Use symbol cruncher and symbol shifter tool to arrange the instances positions. Repeat the steps untill you got the desired effect of the flower’s appearance.
6. Now copy the symbol and paste it in front (Ctrl + F) to make the flower petals look more dense.
Drawing the Stem
7. Now we will start drawing the stem for the flower. Draw an arc using arc tool and adjust the bend of the arc so that it’s not bent too round and give it 20 points weight of stroke.
8. Now go to Object > Path > Outline Stroke to convert the stroke to shape.
9. Apply a reflected light and dark brown gradient to it. I used 110, 83, 36 for dark brown, and 151, 111, 72 for lighter brown.
10. Now we will use a simple trick to make the stem look greenish. Copy the shape we just created and paste it in front (Ctrl + F) and apply reflected green linear gradient. Set the transparency to soft light so that the green shape we just created will blend with the brown one below it. You may want to move the gradient slider around to find the desired effect of the.
Drawing the Leaves
11. Now let’s start to draw the leaves. Draw a vertical ellipse using Ellipse Tool and give it dark to light green vertical gradient as shown in vector flower plant below. I used these colors for gradient: (4, 63, 33) (1, 105, 55 Location: 79%) (139, 167, 64).
12. The steps on drawing the leaf is shown below.
13. Now let’s enhance our leaf’s appearance by clicking on the two middle anchor points of the object and drag them down using free Transform Tool (Default shortcut: E).
14. Now we will add brown shades to the leaf. You can either define your own brown gradients or use the available wood gradient in adobe illustrator. For this tutorial, I’ll just use the wood gradient.
15. Now copy the leaf object and paste it in front and select pecan wood gradient available at wood gradient library and set the transparency to soft light. Group these two overlapping objects so they’re not messed up when you move them around.
16. Create another leaf with yellow shades by duplicating the leaf (remember that there’s 2 overlapping objects that should be copied together). Select the one on top using arrow tool and apply another lighter wood gradient color and set its transparency to Hard Light.
Drawing the Flower
17. Now let’s arrange all the objects we created from earlier steps together. Arrange the order of the leaves to overlap each other and put the stem in the middle of the overlapping leaves. Also put the flower symbols we created earlier on top of all object. After you are happy with the arrangements, group all the objects together (Right Click > Group)
Tips: You can use Ctrl + [ to bring an object backward, or Ctrl + ] to bring it forward, alternatively you can select all grouped objects cut them (Ctrl + x) and paste in front (Ctrl + F) to instantly bring a group of objects in front of other objects.
18. Create a copy of the grouped flower petals and open reflect transform menu by right clicking the mouse and go to Transform > Reflect. Select Vertical axis for the Transform option, and then click OK. Scale down the copy of flower we just created and arrange the placement as how it looks on vector flower plant below. Now we are ready to do the final touches.
Drawing the Soil
19. Create a small shape as shown in vector flower plant, give it black-to-brown linear gradient. I used (117, 76, 36) for brown.
20. Define a new symbol using the shape we just created by dragging it into the symbol panel. Choose Graphic on the Symbol Options window.
21. With the current created symbol selected, use Symbol sprayer tool to spray the symbol around the bottom of the flowers.
22. Use Symbol Scruncher Tool to make the soil closer to each other. Click on the spot where the soil should look dense the most. Also, rotate the symbols using Symbol Spinner tool so that the gradient direction of the symbol will look different.
23. To make the soil denser, select all of the soil symbol instances. Copy and paste in front and move it slightly. Repeat the steps again but this time transform the symbols by reflecting them either on vertical or horizontal axis.
24. Now all the flower’s part is finished, you can duplicate them and arrange them around to achieve your desired effect.
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cool man….. 😀
nice …nice (*_*) !
I think one step is missing after ‘Convert the stroke to shape using Object > Path > Outline’ which is to UNGROUP and then select the outline and apply gradient.
Correct me if I am wrong
Kisan, Indeed you have to ungroup the objects first if you want to select the just-converted shape using Select tool (Win Shortcut: V). But I use arrow tool (Shortcut: A) most when working, so I missed that step because with Arrow tool we can directly apply gradient to an object that grouped with other objects, without have to ungroup them first… 🙂 I prefer this way, so when it comes to creating symbol step, I can directly clicked the grouped objects with Select tool and drag them to the symbol panel. Thanks for the correction… cheers… 🙂
nice end result!