Illustrator Tip of the Month

Exotic Flower Petals - Create an assortment of exotic flowers. Great for wedding, birthday party or shower invitations.

The Petal

1. For this tutorial, I suggest making your document size 8 in x 3 in.

2. Set your fill color as none and your stroke size to 1pt.

3. Select the pen tool and draw a curved line of your petal. (holding down the shift button while making the second point of the curve will keep the two points vertically aligned together)

4. With the curve selected, go to: Copy. Then go to: Paste in Front.

5. Now go to: Object > Transform > Reflect. Refer to image below and press Enter.

6. Nudge the 2nd curve over until both ends meet to make a petal like shown. You may need to zoom in and use the x and y measurements to accurately place the points together. Do not bring the points too close together. Try to make it look similar to the image shown.

7. Using the Direct Selection Tool, select the top two points.

8. Go to: Object > Path > Join.

9. Repeat steps 7 and 8 for the bottom two points.

The Flower

10. With the Selection Tool (v), select your petal.

11. Press (r) for the Rotate Tool.

12. Hold down the Option key while clicking the bottom tip of the petal.

13. Enter 30 degrees into the Rotate dialogue box with the preview checked and click Copy.

14. Command/Ctrl D will allow you to repeat the last copy step. Press Command/Crtl D 10 times to complete your flower.

Color

15. Select your flower and turn your Stroke off (enter 0 and press enter).

16. Go to the Gradient window. Drag any Swatch color(s) of your choice down to the Gradient Slider.

17. Go to the Transparency window and choose Multiply.

Bouquet

18. Select your flower. Then copy (Command/Ctrl v) and paste (Command/Ctrl p) your flower.

19. Go to the Gradient window again. Drag a new Swatch color(s) of your choice down to the Gradient slider to change the flower color.

20. Repeat step 20 as many times as you want variety of colors.

21. You can even change the type of Gradient to Radial or you can change the angle of your Gradient.

22. You don't want the transparency in your flower arrangement to effect each other as they overlap so....Select one of your flowers, press Command/Ctrl C to copy. Press Command/Ctrl B to paste behind.

23. In your Transparency window, change the Multiply back to Normal for the copied flower.

24. Change the fill color to white.

25. Now group (Command/Ctrl G) these two flowers together.

26. Repeat Steps 22-25 for the other flowers. Now you can size and arrange the flowers to get the over image you desire. You can play around with the effects and drop shadow to get additional styles of the bouquet.