Creating A Cartoon Flower

In this tutorial, we’re going to make a cartoon flower. We’ll be using the pen tool a lot as well as some basic layer styles and transform tools. This is a good beginner tutorial with a nice looking results.

First, create a new document (mine’s 350x350px) and then make a new layer. Call it “petal1.”

Now take your pen tool and trace out the shape of your flower petal. For a perfectly symmetrical petal shape, I clicked on the layer to create an anchor point, then held down shift while clicking again above the first anchor, and dragging to the left to create the curve of the petal. Then, when I clicked on the first anchor point again to close the path, I was left with a nice, symmetrical and even shape, like so:

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A Cartoon Flower - Fig 1

Now Ctrl+Click on the path in the Paths palette to load its selection and fill it with the color of your choice. I’m using #ff33ac. Now, with the selection still active, set your foreground color to black (hit D) and go to Edit – Stroke. Enter a width of 2 and set the location as “Center” then click OK.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A Cartoon Flower - Fig 2

Now duplicate the layer by hitting Ctrl+J and rename it to “petal 2.” Next, go to Edit – Transform – Flip Vertical. Now hold down Ctrl and use your arrow keys (or the mouse) to move the petal down so that its tip just touches the tip of the “petal 1″ layer.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A Cartoon Flower - Fig 3

Now hit Ctrl+E to merge the two layers. Hit Ctrl+J once more to duplicate the layer again. Go to Edit – Transform – Rotate 90 CW. Finally, hit Ctrl+E one more time to merge the layers again. Rename the layer to “Bottom Petals”.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A Cartoon Flower - Fig 4

Next, we’re going to duplicate this layer one more time, so hit Ctrl+J again. Rename the new layer to “Top Petals” and go to Edit – Transform – Rotate. Enter a rotation amount of 45 degrees, or just eyeball it so that your final rotation looks like the image below. This is pretty easy to freehand, since Photoshop will snap to the 45 degree rotation angle for you.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorial - Creating A Cartoon Flower - Fig 5

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Added Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 at 3:47 pm under Drawing & Painting.