During this Design Cuts Live session, Claudia Riveros from Riveros Illustration will be joining us to chat all about illustration and graphic design.

In addition to working with brands to help tell their story, Claudia teaches beginners how to master the art of illustration and creates some of our most popular Procreate brush packs. As such, she'll be spending her time demonstrating how she designs beautiful botanical stamps.

To follow along, access her freebie pack which includes a sample from the two brushes she'll be using!

Create a Canvas

Create a new canvas at 3000 x 3000 pixels in Procreate 5x. Turn on reference and then import the image. Choose the reference image that you wish to draw and then import it. For this particular session, Claudia picked a flower.

Draw the Area of the Flower

Choose the Trusty Pencil from the Graphite and Charcoal Brush Set and draw a circle. This helps in understanding the size of your illustration. Once the area of the illustration is defined, draw petals like in the reference image. 

Draw the Petals

Add a new layer on top and with the same pencil and roughly draw the area of the petals. Make sure that the petals closest to you are bigger and the one’s on top are slightly smaller. Follow along the reference image and draw the outline. 

Pro tip: You don’t need to be perfect. Just sketch the layout as per size reference in the image.

Lower the opacity and add another layer on top. Then with the same pencil, draw details in the center of the flower as shown in the image below. 

Add Details to the Flower

Click on the first layer and remove extras with an eraser. Turn off the first layer and then use the eraser to remove extras on the second one.

Then join the other two layers together, raise the opacity and create a new layer on top of it. On this layer, work on the folds of the flower by sketching the details. Merge all the layers together and then lower the opacity. 

Create an Illustration

Add a new layer on the composition. Choose the Ink Brush from the Hand Drawing Tool Kit. Choose a deep black color and start inking the sketch. 

Press hard onto the brush where the shadow falls and press lightly where the light falls on the flower. This forms the main skeleton of the flower. 

Lower the opacity of this layer once the skeleton is formed and add a new layer. Then add ink on the centre buds. 

Increase the opacity of the ink layer and then merge the ink layers together. Then, add a new layer to work on the details and folds of the flower. Add folds and details by marking them with the Ink Brush, creating an illusion of folds. 

Then add entails on the petals by drawing small lines and dots as shown in the image below. This gives the flower more detail and depth. 

Add crosshatching at the ends. As you can see, the reference image of the lily has a white border around the pink petal. Add thin lines at the edges of the petals just as the reference image. 

Add freckles on the petals to give it more definition and depth. These look like ink spots. See image below for reference. 

The illustration is now ready to be turned into a stamp. 

Make Stamps

Merge all the layer and turn off the reference image. Select the illustration, convert it to a JPEG and save the file. Click on the brush menu and click on the plus sign to get a new brush. 

Then click on the shape menu and edit the shape. To do this, click on edit, then import the flower file that was recently saved as a JPEG. Add black color to the illustration by snapping two fingers on the iPad. 

Edit the Settings 

On the Stroke Path Manual, change the spacing to 245. In Taper, don’t change any settings. In Shape, define a shape you like. In Grain, switch it to solid white. The rest of the settings such as color dynamic, rendering and color, it all stays the same. On Apple Pencil, change the opacity to none. This means, no matter how strongly you push the pencil, the stamp will remain the same. 

Then switch to properties. Change the brush setting to ‘use them preview’ to 7%. Then keep the maximum size to max and minimum size to 25%. Then rename the brush as you like. Then you can sign your brush and no one can change the settings. 

That’s it, that’s how you can create your own illustrations and make it into a stamp brush.