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I'm curious how you would attempt to draw this flower in AD:

1) Draw with pen tool

2) Draw using a graphic tablet and then trace using pen tool

3) Draw using pre-defined shapes like crescent etc

4) other options?

 

I realize that this depends on your level of expertise, but I'm just trying to understand different approaches that people might have...thanks.

post-47315-0-34927700-1486607952_thumb.png

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When you´re in a hurry 1 min autotracing in Inkscape will do plus manual adding background gradient or spent 30 min in manually drawing 4 outlines (2 for the dark blue compound path, 1 mid blue, 1 light blue + linear gradient background) with the pen-tool:

 

Cheers

P.

post-28670-0-23454300-1486635634_thumb.png

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I don't have Inkscape, a tablet, or appreciable freehand drawing skills, so I did a manual tracing of the screenshot with the Pen tool. I started by tracing the black outline, duplicated it, & adjusted the nodes of the duplicate to create the light blue shape. The darker blue shapes were down with 'insert inside selection' active for the light blue shape so I didn't have to trace the outer edges.

 

The whole thing took about 30 minutes. It isn't as accurate as using an auto-tracing app but, at least in my experience with low end auto-tracers like Super Vectorizer, it produces far fewer nodes.

flower traced.afdesign

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V23.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Pretty efficient! Nothing can beat manually Bézier-work.  :D

It isn't very efficient time-wise, but at least for me, it goes quicker if I start with rough paths & then go back with the Node tool to refine them. The ability to bend a line segment between two nodes without having to select either node is very useful for this.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V23.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I don't have Inkscape, a tablet, or appreciable freehand drawing skills, so I did a manual tracing of the screenshot with the Pen tool. I started by tracing the black outline, duplicated it, & adjusted the nodes of the duplicate to create the light blue shape. The darker blue shapes were down with 'insert inside selection' active for the light blue shape so I didn't have to trace the outer edges.

 

The whole thing took about 30 minutes. It isn't as accurate as using an auto-tracing app but, at least in my experience with low end auto-tracers like Super Vectorizer, it produces far fewer nodes.

wow..that's pretty amazing considering it took you 30 minutes. so you traced the black outline just by switching between looking at the .jpg and using the pen tool to draw the shape?

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wow..that's pretty amazing considering it took you 30 minutes. so you traced the black outline just by switching between looking at the .jpg and using the pen tool to draw the shape?

Actually, I opened the jpg from the screenshot in Designer, set its layer opacity to about 50%, locked it, & started tracing over the black outline with the pen tool set to 1 px thickness & no fill. As I completed each vector shape, I filled it with the appropriate color sampled from the jpg layer, & then sent it to the bottom of the layer stack. Because the jpg layer was 50% transparent, I could always see it & use it as a reference for where to place nodes in the next shape I drew.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V23.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Actually, I opened the jpg from the screenshot in Designer, set its layer opacity to about 50%, locked it, & started tracing over the black outline with the pen tool set to 1 px thickness & no fill. As I completed each vector shape, I filled it with the appropriate color sampled from the jpg layer, & then sent it to the bottom of the layer stack. Because the jpg layer was 50% transparent, I could always see it & use it as a reference for where to place nodes in the next shape I drew.

thanks for clarifying that...very helpful.

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Actually, I opened the jpg from the screenshot in Designer, set its layer opacity to about 50%, locked it, & started tracing over the black outline with the pen tool set to 1 px thickness & no fill. As I completed each vector shape, I filled it with the appropriate color sampled from the jpg layer, & then sent it to the bottom of the layer stack. Because the jpg layer was 50% transparent, I could always see it & use it as a reference for where to place nodes in the next shape I drew.

 

A useful tracing trick I picked up a few years ago is to put the tracing layer under the picture, instead of putting it on top as you would do with real tracing paper. This allows you to see the 50% transparent original at all times, rather than having it progressively covered by the traced version which would then need to be hidden whenever you wanted to view the reference image.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 16.7.2 (iPad 7th gen)

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A useful tracing trick I picked up a few years ago is to put the tracing layer under the picture, instead of putting it on top as you would do with real tracing paper. This allows you to see the 50% transparent original at all times, rather than having it progressively covered by the traced version which would then need to be hidden whenever you wanted to view the reference image.

Because the default is to create new layers at the top of the layer stack & the Insert Target > "Insert behind selection" button requires selecting the original each time a new layer is created, I find it easier to ignore that option until the new layer created with the Pen tool is complete & then click on the Order button or drag in the Layer panel to place it below the original. Since I am not initially using a fill with the Pen tool & just a thin stroke, the original is not covered.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V23.0 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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