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After you have created the front window, go ahead and create the back one, following the same method. This is a sponsored post. Next, in the side toolbar, select the Pen tool or drawing shapes in affinity designer free Pzoom in a bit so that you can work more shzpes, and start tracing a segment, following the outline продолжение здесь the car in the picture. When you drag a selection in Affinity Designer, only objects that are completely within the selection area will be selected.
 
 

Drawing shapes in affinity designer free. How To Create A Flat Vector Illustration In Affinity Designer

For this, go to the tools displayed on the left side, and select the Rectangle tool. Drag it along the canvas, making sure to give it an initial random fill color so that you can see it. The fill color chip is located in the top toolbar. To straighten the gradient and make it vertical, place your cursor over one of the ends and pull.

When you are near the vertical line, press Shift : This will make it perfectly vertical and perpendicular to the base of the canvas. Click now on the color chip, and an additional dialog will open.

Repeat this action with the other color stop in the gradient dialog, and input this value: E1C Double-click on it to rename it, and then lock it by clicking on the little lock icon in the top-right corner.

The next thing we need to do is look for an image that will serve as our reference to draw the outline of the car. From the images I found, I selected one of a green Beetle and copied and pasted it into my document.

Next, in the side toolbar, select the Pen tool or press P , zoom in a bit so that you can work more comfortably, and start tracing a segment, following the outline of the car in the picture. Give the stroke an 8-pixel width in the Stroke panel. The Pen tool is one of the most daunting tools for beginners, and it is obviously one of the most important tools to learn in vector graphics.

While practice is needed to reach perfection, it is also a matter of understanding some simple actions that will help you use the tool better. As you trace with the Pen tool in Affinity Designer, you will see two types of nodes: squared nodes appear first, and as you pull the handles, they will turn into rounded nodes.

Select the Pen tool, click once, move some distance away, click a second time a straight line will be created between nodes 1 and 2 , drag the second node this will create a curve , Alt -click the node to remove the second control handle, then proceed with node 3, and so on.

In fact, Affinity Designer makes it really easy to amend segments and nodes, so tracing a rough line to start is just fine. What we need now is to make all of those rough lines look smooth and curvy. First, we will pull the straight segments to smoothen them, and then we will improve them using the Corner tool. Click the Node tool in the side toolbar, or select it by pressing A on your keyboard. Now, start pulling segments to follow the lines of your reference picture.

You can also use the handles to help make the line take the shape you need by moving and pulling them accordingly. With the Node tool A , you can both select and move nodes , but you can also click and drag the curves themselves to change them. Once all of the segments are where we need them, we are going to smoothen their corners using the Corner tool shortcut: C.

This is one of my favorite tools in Affinity Designer. The live Corner tool allows you to adjust your nodes and segments to perfection. Select it by pressing C , or select it from the Tools sidebar. The method is pretty simple: Pass the corner tool over the sharp nodes squared nodes that you want to smoothen.

If you need to, switch back to the Node tool A to adjust a section of a segment by pulling it or its handles. Click on the stroke color chip beside it and input Create now a shape with the Pen tool, and fill it with black The exact shape of the new object that you will create does not really matter, except that its bottom side needs to be straight, as in the image below.

We need to put the wheels in place next. In the Tools, pick the Ellipse tool, and drag over the canvas, creating a circle the same size as the wheel in the reference picture. Click Shift as you drag to make the circle proportionate. Additionally, holding Ctrl Windows or Cmd Mac , you can create a perfect circle from the center out. Note: If you need to, hide the layers created thus far to see better, or simply reduce their opacity temporarily.

Choose a random color that contrasts with the rest. I like to do so initially just so that I can see the shapes well contrasted and differentiated. When I am happy with them, I apply the final color. Zoom into your wheel shape. Press Z to select the Zoom tool, and drag over the shape while holding Alt key, or double-click on the thumbnail corresponding to it in the Layers panel. A new circle will be placed on top of the original one. Select it. Repeat three times, reducing a bit more in size each time, to fit your reference.

This will happen from your third smart-duplicated shape onwards. So, we have our concentric circles for the wheel, and now we have to change the colors. You can select a color and modify it slightly to adapt to what you think works best. We need to apply fill and stroke colors. Remember to give the stroke the same width as the rest of the car 8 pixels except for the innermost circle, where we will apply a stroke of Now we want to select and group all of them together.

Duplicate this group and, while pressing Shift , select it and drag along the canvas until it overlaps with the back wheel. Name the layer accordingly. We need to trace the front and back fenders. We have to do the same as what we did for the main bodywork. Pick the Pen tool and trace an outline over it. Once it is traced, modify it by using the handles, nodes and Corner tool. I also modified the black shape behind the car a bit, so that it shows a bit more in the lower part of the body work.

Now we want to trace some of the inner lines that define the car. For this, we will duplicate the main yellow shape, remove its fill color and place it onto our illustration in the canvas. Press A on the keyboard, and click on any of the bottom nodes of the segment.

You will see now that the selected node has turned into a red-outlined squared node. Click on it and pull anywhere. As you can see, the segment is now open. Click the Delete or Backspace key Windows or the Delete key Mac , and do the same with all of the bottom nodes, leaving just the leftmost and rightmost ones, and also being very careful that what is left of the top section of the segment is not deformed at all. I use this method for one main reason: Duplicating an existing line allows for a more consistent look and for more harmonious lines.

Select now the newly opened curve, and make it smaller in such a way that it fits into the main yellow shape when you place them on top of one another. In the Layers panel, drag this curve into the yellow shape layer to create a clipping mask. The reason for creating a clipping mask is simple: We want an object inside another object so that they do not overlap i. Not doing so would result in some bits of the nested object being visible, which is not what we want; we need perfect, clean-cut lines.

Note: Clipping masks are not to be mistaken for masks. Masks, on the other hand, display a small vertical blue stripe beside the thumbnail. Then, I applied a bit more Corner tool to soften whatever I felt needed to be softened.

Finally, with the Pen tool, I added some extra nodes and segments to create the rest of the inner lines that define the car. Note: In order to select an object in a mask, a clipping mask or a group when not selecting the object directly in the Layers panel, you have to double-click until you select the object, or hold Ctrl Windows or Cmd Mac and click.

In the side Toolbar, select the Rounded Rectangle tool. Drag on the canvas to create a shape. I recommend that you visually compare the difference between having this option checked and unchecked when you need to resize an object with a stroke. Once you have placed your rounded rectangle on the canvas, fill it with a blue-ish colour. Next, select it with the Node tool press A.

You will now see a little orange circle in the top-left corner. Uncheck it , and pull inwards on the tiny orange circle in the top-left corner. Primitive shapes are not so flexible in terms of vector manipulation compared to curves and lines , so, in order to apply further changes to such a shape beyond fill, stroke, corners, width and height , we will need to convert it to curves. Note: Once you convert a primitive shape into curves, there is no way to go back, and there will be no option to manipulate the shape through the little orange stops.

If you need further tweaking, you will need to do it with the Corner tool. The bounding box will disappear, and all of the nodes forming the shape will be shown. Press ” Shift” while doing this to constrain proportions at least initially. If we feel the circle needs a bit of adjusting, re-scaling or stretching, we can do so later on as we go. Lower the opacity of the ellipse to something that allows you to see through it you can do this via layers panel 3 or pressing a given number on your keyboard, i.

I have modified the height of the first shape to make it longer vertically, so everything feels more balanced and fits correctly and less cluttered, especially later on when I place the beak.

Also, as mentioned before, I have made the hind part of the Toucan’s body the ellipse less circular and more elliptical see image below. Select the Rectangle basic shape you’ll find in both Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo in the left Tool bar and draw a rectangle in your canvas.

Give it a transparency to see through it so you work more comfortably. Place it overlapping the ellipse as in the image below.

Next, select both rectangle and ellipse make sure the rectangle is on top of the ellipse in the Layers panel and from the top menu “Geometry” press “Subtract” 1 to cut the base of the ellipse. Your shapes should now look something similar to this:. Repeat the same operation with the other shape. This will be important later on. You should end up with something like this:. In the image above, you can see both shapes selected and showing the nodes squares are sharp nodes, circles are smooth nodes.

Next, select both shapes and again, on the Geometry menu, press on the first icon: Add 1. This will create a single shape out of the initial two. Note how we now only have one object apart from the background on the Layers panel. Name it ” body”. Next, pick the Corner tool C on your keyboard and hover over the selected node. Pull inwards as shown in the video:. Click to play. Select the Rounded rectangle shape on the left Tool bar and drag to draw it over the Toucan’s body.

On the contextual menu for the rounded rectangle shape, uncheck the Single radius option and enter these values for each corner:. Take this as an approximation of what your own shapes are asking for. It should look similar to this:. Image 1 – Click to enlarge. Image 2 – Click to enlarge. Then, select the Ellipse shape and draw a circle with a thick stroke and place it on top of the pink shape you can clip mask it but it is not necessary.

Pick the colours you like. In my case, a black circle with a 8px yellow stroke. Select a rounded rectangle and draw it on your canvas. Pick a colour and add some noise. Name your object “beak” on the Layers panel. Uncheck the Single radius option on the upper contextual menu as we’ve done several times before and enter these values:. Give it the right size to match the rest of the drawing and place it accordingly, remembering to have the Snapping on for better accuracy top menu horseshoe icon , and make it look similar to this:.

I will ad more details to the beak at the end of the tutorial when fine-tuning the illustration. To create the feet I have used two Crescent tool shapes from the list of basic shapes. Pick the Square tool shape and draw a wide rectangle on your canvas as in the image below. Don’t worry about the colour now, pick any colour and make sure it doesn’t have a stroke or outline applied to it. Next, duplicate the branch 2 or 3 times and resize the new branches to make them smaller.

Place them overlapping the main branch giving them different angles. Select all the branches and, in the upper menu Geometry , press the first icon to apply an Add operation as we’ve done before for other elements. This will create one single shape out of the initial four. Next, apply a Linear gradient colour two shades of brown with the Fill tool G on your keyboard 1 and add a bit of noise to it 2.

Probably by now you can guess how to create them easily using basic shapes. Select the Tear tool basic shape from the list and draw several leaves. Apply a green colour to them and add a bit of noise. Let’s now put all the Toucan’s parts together on a group and the leaves and branch on another to put some order. Name your grouped layers accordingly in Affinity Designer Layer’s Panel. Make sure the Toucan group is on top of the Branch group so the feet are visible over the branch.

Now it’s a good moment to adjust just slightly some of the things that might need it, be it colours, shapes, sizes, etc, until you’re happy. I have added now the lower part on the beak, so it looks like it has two parts and not so blocky and flat as it was. For that, I have duplicated the beak, removed the clipped squares inside the duplicated shape and then I have clip masked it into the main beak shape. I have also resized it so it fits properly into the main beak shape.

Drawing with Basic Shapes in Affinity Designer (no Pen Tool needed) – Vector or raster, you decide

Her speciality is digital graphics. Trusted by This is a sponsored post. It was July when Serif Europe launched the amazing software that many designers and illustrators like me are using now as their main tool for professional work. In this article, I would like to walk you through just some of its very user-friendly main tools and features as an introduction to the software and to show you how we can create a nice flat vector illustration of a Volkswagen Beetle.

The illustration will scale up to whatever resolution and size needed because no bitmaps will be used. I will also explain some of the decisions I take and methods I follow as I work. We will see how to work with the Pen tool to trace the main car outline, how to break curves and segments, how to convert objects into curves, and how to use the wonderful Corner tool. Of course, along the way, you will also learn some helpful keyboard shortcuts and commands.

By default, Affinity Designer is set to the draw persona. To switch from the draw persona to the pixel persona or to the export persona, you have to click on one of the three icons located in the top-left corner of the main window. You can start working in the draw persona and switch to the pixel persona at any time, when you need to combine vectors and bitmaps. Apple had some of the best examples of skeuomorphism in its early iOS and app designs, and today it is widely used in many industries, such as music software and video games.

As you can imagine, illustrations on these systems were also affected by the new design currents, and illustrators and designers started creating artwork that would be consistent with the new times and needs. A whole new world of flat icons, flat infographics and flat illustrations opened in front of our eyes. I am providing the source file for this work over here , so you can use it to explore it and to better follow along as we design it.

If you do not yet have a copy of Affinity Designer, you can download a trial. If you want to learn more on the topic, check the following two resources:. Also, remember that you can change this setting at any time. One of the things I use a lot in Affinity Designer is its ability to import the colors contained in an image and creating a palette from them.

From all the images it found, I chose one that I liked and copied it into Affinity Designer in my recently created canvas. You can copy and paste the image to the canvas directly from the browser.

We can now get rid of that reference image, or simply hide it in the Layers panel. We will be using this palette as a guide to create our artwork with harmonious colors. Interface: Before we continue, I will present a quick overview of the main sections of the user interface in Affinity Designer, and the names of some of the most used tools.

The next thing is to create a background. For this, go to the tools displayed on the left side, and select the Rectangle tool. Drag it along the canvas, making sure to give it an initial random fill color so that you can see it. The fill color chip is located in the top toolbar. To straighten the gradient and make it vertical, place your cursor over one of the ends and pull.

When you are near the vertical line, press Shift : This will make it perfectly vertical and perpendicular to the base of the canvas. Click now on the color chip, and an additional dialog will open. Repeat this action with the other color stop in the gradient dialog, and input this value: E1C Double-click on it to rename it, and then lock it by clicking on the little lock icon in the top-right corner.

The next thing we need to do is look for an image that will serve as our reference to draw the outline of the car. From the images I found, I selected one of a green Beetle and copied and pasted it into my document. Next, in the side toolbar, select the Pen tool or press P , zoom in a bit so that you can work more comfortably, and start tracing a segment, following the outline of the car in the picture.

Give the stroke an 8-pixel width in the Stroke panel. The Pen tool is one of the most daunting tools for beginners, and it is obviously one of the most important tools to learn in vector graphics.

While practice is needed to reach perfection, it is also a matter of understanding some simple actions that will help you use the tool better. As you trace with the Pen tool in Affinity Designer, you will see two types of nodes: squared nodes appear first, and as you pull the handles, they will turn into rounded nodes. Select the Pen tool, click once, move some distance away, click a second time a straight line will be created between nodes 1 and 2 , drag the second node this will create a curve , Alt -click the node to remove the second control handle, then proceed with node 3, and so on.

In fact, Affinity Designer makes it really easy to amend segments and nodes, so tracing a rough line to start is just fine. What we need now is to make all of those rough lines look smooth and curvy. First, we will pull the straight segments to smoothen them, and then we will improve them using the Corner tool. Click the Node tool in the side toolbar, or select it by pressing A on your keyboard.

Now, start pulling segments to follow the lines of your reference picture. You can also use the handles to help make the line take the shape you need by moving and pulling them accordingly.

With the Node tool A , you can both select and move nodes , but you can also click and drag the curves themselves to change them. Once all of the segments are where we need them, we are going to smoothen their corners using the Corner tool shortcut: C. This is one of my favorite tools in Affinity Designer. The live Corner tool allows you to adjust your nodes and segments to perfection. Select it by pressing C , or select it from the Tools sidebar. The method is pretty simple: Pass the corner tool over the sharp nodes squared nodes that you want to smoothen.

If you need to, switch back to the Node tool A to adjust a section of a segment by pulling it or its handles.

Click on the stroke color chip beside it and input Create now a shape with the Pen tool, and fill it with black Your rounded rectangle should now look like this:. Next, select the Ellipse basic tool shape 1 and also, it is a good idea to turn ON the Snapping The horseshoe icon on the upper tool bar 2. This will make it much easier to position accurately new and existing objects by ‘magnetizing’ or ‘snapping’ them to other objects or document elements.

Drag you cursor over the canvas to draw a circle. About the size, make it as big as you need so it looks well integrated with the other part of the body, as in the example. Press ” Shift” while doing this to constrain proportions at least initially. If we feel the circle needs a bit of adjusting, re-scaling or stretching, we can do so later on as we go. Lower the opacity of the ellipse to something that allows you to see through it you can do this via layers panel 3 or pressing a given number on your keyboard, i.

I have modified the height of the first shape to make it longer vertically, so everything feels more balanced and fits correctly and less cluttered, especially later on when I place the beak.

Also, as mentioned before, I have made the hind part of the Toucan’s body the ellipse less circular and more elliptical see image below. Select the Rectangle basic shape you’ll find in both Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo in the left Tool bar and draw a rectangle in your canvas. Give it a transparency to see through it so you work more comfortably.

Place it overlapping the ellipse as in the image below. Next, select both rectangle and ellipse make sure the rectangle is on top of the ellipse in the Layers panel and from the top menu “Geometry” press “Subtract” 1 to cut the base of the ellipse. Your shapes should now look something similar to this:. Repeat the same operation with the other shape. This will be important later on. You should end up with something like this:. In the image above, you can see both shapes selected and showing the nodes squares are sharp nodes, circles are smooth nodes.

Next, select both shapes and again, on the Geometry menu, press on the first icon: Add 1. This will create a single shape out of the initial two. Note how we now only have one object apart from the background on the Layers panel. Name it ” body”. Next, pick the Corner tool C on your keyboard and hover over the selected node.

Pull inwards as shown in the video:. Click to play. Select the Rounded rectangle shape on the left Tool bar and drag to draw it over the Toucan’s body. On the contextual menu for the rounded rectangle shape, uncheck the Single radius option and enter these values for each corner:.

Take this as an approximation of what your own shapes are asking for. It should look similar to this:. Image 1 – Click to enlarge. Image 2 – Click to enlarge. Then, select the Ellipse shape and draw a circle with a thick stroke and place it on top of the pink shape you can clip mask it but it is not necessary. Pick the colours you like. In my case, a black circle with a 8px yellow stroke. Select a rounded rectangle and draw it on your canvas. Above, you can see how the entire drawing looks so far.

At this point, I hide my original sketch. I try not to spend too much time on this step to avoid feeling tempted to fix the paths too much. This is a helpful tip when you feel too lazy to come up with a simple color palette from scratch.

Just look for something that you like. Instead, the idea is that you work out your color palette, but with some help to not start from scratch. Paste these colors in your document. In this case, I added this as an Application Palette. Using my new Color Palette, I filled up my shapes, and this is how it looks.

If you ask me, I hate these colors! I think these colors look cleaner and fresh. To me, texturing is a crucial part of this process. I borrowed some brushes from our Rough Shaders for Affinity Designer pack. I use the Color Picker to get the base color and then using the Color Panel I chose a darker value to create a basic color shade.

I locked this textured color shade to your target shape using Clipping Masks. And finally, drawing a larger texture across the Artboard to add some teeth to the background. Now you have all your shapes, textures, and colors laid down, you can feel free to play around with the final composition.