Flat Design Potted Plants | Illustrator CC Tutorial

[Music] what's up guys this is Spencer from pixel & bracket and in this tutorial I'm going to show you how to make a potted plant in Adobe Illustrator so here we are I have a new document open this document is 1920 by 1080 you can go to file new and just create a new document if you want to follow along 1920 by 1080 that's in pixels or points or whatever you so desire okay I have a little bit of a background on this it's just like a sort of a tan very light tan color but that doesn't matter too much let's get started first things first let's make a square so we're gonna make the pot first and that's gonna be with the rectangle tool the shortcut key for that is M so I'm just gonna make it a little square out here doesn't have to be a perfect square just this is gonna be the bottom of the pot and we're gonna make it right about there right about that size just kind of guesstimating and we want a color for this I like to use the color the actual color panel you can go up to window down the color that's f6 it's gonna pop out here I'm gonna dock it over here in my toolbar and then it's this guy we're not that guy yeah that guy that guy right there the color window and so I like to double click on this and then I can choose any sort of color and I think that sort of terracotta color will work well for these I actually have colors already prepared and what I would do is once you pick your color go ahead and open the swatches panel that's in window down to swatches and once you have that open click this new swatch button and when you do that checkmark global swatch that's gonna create a swatch that you can change later and it'll change all the colors in your design that use that swatch which is very nice for working backwards later when you want to change colors so I have these already picked out I have five of them created I'll go ahead and show you the color numbers every time I go into this and that doesn't show you well it shows you the RGB 237 151 and 107 but if you're looking for a hex code we can go back over to this little color palette double click on that guy and we have eighty nine seven six B that is the hex code for this little terracotta color so we're gonna use this we got this square created I'm actually going to duplicate it by holding option or alt clicking and dragging and holding shift kind of dragging up notice all those pink lines I'm gonna let go there's a duplication of it those pink lines are smart guides are gonna be very handy go up to view down to smart guides command you or control use the shortcut for that whoo that's a lot of stuff all right we got some of that out of the way now let's really create this thing I'm gonna zoom in a little bit that's command + or ctrl + and we're gonna scale this rectangle down because remember this is gonna be the top of our little pot so we'll scale him down to somewhere right in there and then I'm gonna hold option or alt and just on the double-ended horizontal arrows here I'm gonna click and drag that out a little bit because you know there's a little bit of a lip to the top of these type of pots okay cool we are creating one of those Mario pipes so far okay so I'm gonna grab this bottom corner here with the direct selection tool the shortcut key for that is a once I have that grabbed I'm gonna hold shift and hit my left arrow key just maybe one time over to get some of that little tapering off of the pot at the bottom I'm gonna do the same thing with this right one just grab that point shift right arrow key to bring those into each other so this is cool I think this pot is a little tall so I'm gonna remain on my direct selection tool grab both the bottom points just by clicking and dragging over both the bottom points and how about we shift-click up with the arrow key one click that looks a lot better to me okay so let's round some corners I'm going to click on my entire shape with the direct selection tool you could also click with the regular selection tool if you wanted to I'm going to find my transform window up in window down to transform that's gonna pop out and what that gives me is some corner options down here as long as you have this still as a perfect square or rectangle with all 90-degree angles you're gonna get this little corner panel so for this corner radius I'm gonna do five points and because this is linked they're all going to change at the same time which works for me so we just rounded all of those corners you can also click and drag on these little dots which will do that at the bottom of this so at the base of this pot down here I'm going to click-and-drag grab those two points again and kind of pull those little dots in just a touch just to round off those bottom two corners now if you're in cs6 go check out my rounding corners in cs6 tutorial and you'll be able to round those bottom two corners in the same way as those who are updated okay so we have our little a little pot thing but I need a separation between the top and the bottom so we're gonna do that by creating a little bit of a shadow under the lip of this the top of this pot to do that we're gonna go back to the rectangle tool remember that's M for the shortcut key I'm going to create a rectangle and it's just gonna be sort of haphazardly across this guy but then I'm gonna pull him up so he locks into the bottom of the lip of the pot here and once I do that I'm gonna zoom in a little bit more switch to my selection tool grab the bottom of this with the double-ended vertical arrows and kind of drag that up a little bit maybe into here I don't want this shadow to be too tall you know just a little bit underneath the lip of this okay so that looks good now I'm gonna click and drag grab both this rectangle and the bottom rectangle see how they're both selected switch over to my shape builder tool that's shift in as the shortcut key and I'm gonna hold alt on a PC or option on a Mac and that switches that arrow to a minus instead of a plus and if I just click and drag through these extra bits they're gonna get rid of them for me so there we go now we have a shape right over the top of this pot and what we need to do with that guy's just change his color so I'm gonna switch back to the selection tool make sure I have just this piece selected go back to my swatches which I'm not sure which one that is there we go and I'm gonna select my darker color here my sort of darker tan and that color is 193 110 7/3 on the RGB scale and on the hex code scale it's c16 e49 so you can input that and you'll get the same color if you want the same color all right so we've have a little shadow let's zoom out there's our pot I mean it's looking pretty good so far last thing I'm going to do is add an entire shadow on the right side of this as if there's a light source from the left coming down to the right that's super easy these days used to not know this trick but grab the rectangle tool create a rectangle and make sure that it cuts or stops or locks in at the halfway point of your shape smart guides help you out here I'm gonna let go there's a rectangle cool doesn't matter what color it is switch back to my selection tool grab everything go back to the shape builder tool that's shift m and now it sees everything which is real nice I just want to get rid of this piece here so I'm gonna hold option or alt for the minus and slice right through that and it's gone so there we go we have a shadow on the right side I'm gonna click on it change its fill to a black color and then bring its opacity down to something like 10% so we just have a little bit of a hint of a shadow on that side sweet I'm gonna grab all of this right click group it together and now we have a pot and while we're at it I'm gonna show you quickly how to create another style of pot we're gonna grab this go to the ellipse tool that's l4 the shortcut key from here I'm going to hold shift and option or Shift + Alt on a PC to kind of create it from the center out I want to create it about the same height as this guy actually we could lock it in well I don't want to lock it I'm going to create it a little bit further so a little bit taller then pop on the left let go there's a shape there okay switch to the selection tool make sure it's selected the I key for the eyedropper tool and I can just eyedropper this color there we go now I'm going to cut off the top and the bottom but creating rectangles again and I'm going to create a rectangle that lines up with the top of that terracotta pot on the left just like that and I'm gonna create a rectangle that lines up at the bottom of it just like that now I'm going to switch to the selection tool that is V for the shortcut key grab everything shift M that's my shape builder tool and I'm gonna get rid of this slice here so I can just slice through the top of those shapes and bottom of these shapes so here's another style of pot now I think that I cut a little bit too much off the bottom of this guy I think the top should be a lot more open so I'm going to undo with command or control Z and I'm just gonna move this rectangle down a little bit and we're gonna see how much it cuts off there I think that's better I think it should taper a little bit so we're gonna do the same thing just select everything go to the shape builder tool and then hold option or alt and drag through this and that looks a little bit better now we can scale this guy down some he doesn't have to be so so tall and then we can drag him down to match the bottom of this pot and then what I think you could do is add a little bit of a decoration to this guy so I'm going to grab my rectangle tool just create a rectangle through here kind of on the top third of this I could bring him down just a touch and then what we'll do with this guy's we can change his color I like this sort of whitish tan color the hex code for that guy is f9 e 0 d7 ok so we can grab both of these shift M for the shape builder tool and then slice off these two side pieces by holding the option or alt and dragging through them so here's a different style of pot we can once again M for the shape tool drag through this and create the shadow if we just select everything shift M for the shape builder tool hold option or alt slice through that right side we've got a shape for the right side of this once again just change him to black and 10% and there is our sort of rounded version of this pot so we can grab this group him together that's also command or control G okay there we go we have two styles of pots right little bonus here now we're going to create the leaves so let's zoom out just a touch that's commander control - come over here and we're gonna create two circles with the rect and now the rectangle tool with the ellipse tool that's L for the shortcut key I'm gonna create a circle I like creating them from the center out so I hold shift and alt or shift + option created from the center out doesn't matter how big we're just gonna create two of these guys so switch back to the shape or selection tool grab this guy hold option or all and we're gonna duplicate him out and look at this carefully the middle where these two crossed it's like a Venn diagram right where they cross creates a leaf shape so create the shape that you want maybe something in here let go and now grab both of these with the selection tool and see how we have that shape in middle well you guessed it we're gonna use the shape builder tool that's shift M hold option or I'll slice off these two sides and we have a leaf so easy now this leaf we want him to be a certain color I have a swatch up here just a light green but we have two leaves I'm gonna delete this one sometimes it'll duplicate that for whatever reason I'll create two anyway that doesn't matter I created this little green color if you want the same green color that's going to be 87 be - 7 - cool ok we need to create a shadow on the right side of this with maybe a darker green so once again the shape tool up here rectangle tool M is the shortcut key grab that make it so it's just over the halfway point boom okay and then V for the shortcut key grab everything hey you think we should use the shape builder tool shift it mm hold option or all of the shape builder tool just slice through that right side now you have a shape that is the size of half of this so we're gonna change his color I've got a swatch for that look at that there we go by the way this color 52 6 D 45 there you go you guys that's all the colors we're using now I have this leaf I'm gonna group him together so he's easy to move around group and we can just bring him over here now more than likely he's on top of our pot well since we grouped this pot together we just click on it right click go to arrange bring to front it's also shift command right bracket or shift control right bracket and we're starting to build this little leaf we can with the double-ended arrows we can always grab the top and bottom of this I'd like to hold shift to keep it in proportion but you can also I'll show you in a second where you could skew it if you wanted but we have this guy so we can duplicate him to the left maybe duplicate it or maybe just rotate him a little bit all right you could bring him down some we could scale him down some hold shift when you're scaling and then we could do the same thing over to the right and just kind of make this pot or this plant however you want him to look just like that there you go and you can you can do or you can group these guys with command or control G they're grouped together this guy's grouped together you could group the whole plant together commander control G with everything selected now it's one big group and you can kind of Center it up with your eyes that's fine so we could we could take this group here well we'll just yeah so if you double click into a group you're in the isolated portion of that group so you can work on the elements inside of it I could grab this group because now we have these two pieces inside of the whole sort of plant group I can grab this guy command or control C to copy double click outside of it and you'll go back to your normal level you're not in isolation mode anymore you can command or control V to paste and now we have this little plant again and we could always just bring him down inside of this guy here he's on top so we'll just grab the pot right click arrange bring to front and now we have two different styles of plants and I can just bump him over with the arrow keys to position him to different styles of plants in to or well two different styles of potted plants same plant okay cool Wow we did it lots of talking oh I got to go but that's okay I'm gonna do one more thing for you guys and that is I'm gonna grab this guy bring him over here that's a duplication with the option or Alt key okay I'm going to ungroup him that's shift command G or shift control G and then we're going to we're gonna bring this group over here and I just want one of these leaves so I'm gonna double click find this leaf probably command C for copy or control C and then I can just delete this group I don't care about him anymore I'm gonna command or control V to paste now I have this leaf watch what happens when I don't hold shift it actually squashes the leaf down makes him a little bit rounder so if I had something like this I could make a little baby plant over here let's create another shape for this stem of this little baby plant and he's just gonna poke out of here that might be a little too thick that's okay something like that that's what the rectangle tool again that's shortcut key M so I want him to actually be the lighter color so I'm going to use the I key for the eyedropper tool and grab the lighter color green I'm going to bring this pot to the front right click arrange bring to front now that's behind there and I'm just gonna drag this leaf on top which he's not on top so we need to bring him to the front as well arrange bring to front and now I can rotate him to the side if I hold shift it'll be 45 degrees and I can just kind of position him on there I think this stems a little a little too thick so we're gonna zoom in here we can grab this rectangle hold option or alt and you can kind of scale out from the center remember that and I'm just gonna make his stem a little bit skinnier maybe that's too skinny maybe we'll just make that a little bit thicker something like that and then we can bring these leaves and just duplicate them with option or alt and we could rotate them we could flip them actually and then rotate them so the shadows are still on the bottoms of the leaves and we can create two little leaves on here you know these leaves might be a little too big for that but and they're a little too lemon looking so we can always skew them back a little bit so they're a little bit more leaf shape that's holding option and kind of skewing from the horizontal section of that and then we can bump that over just to make sure he's over the top of this stem if you want to you can zoom in and just make sure that lines up with the side there and covers up anything we can zoom way in on this guy and make sure that uh sort of lines up there with the with the stem now we can zoom out and there we go we have like a little baby plant over there that's a little bonus I've got to get going thank you guys for joining me for this lovely tutorial on potted plants I hope you guys learned a thing or two in this and appreciated it if you if you like this video make sure you like this video subscribe for more tips and tutorials thanks for watching I'll see you guys next time [Music]

Channel: Pixel & Bracket

Views: 924,647

Keywords: pixel and bracket, illustrator tutorial, flat design illustrator tutorial, minimal design illustrator tutorial, flat design potted plant tutorial, flat design plants tutorial, vector potted plant illustrator tutorial, flat design, minimal design, how to design flat graphics in illustrator, vector plant tutorial, vector plant illustrator, vector potted plant illustrator, how to make a flat design, how to make a minimal design, minimal design tutorial, adobe illustrator tutorial

Id: pTV2n7fT4fk

Length: 18min 12sec (1092 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2018