Drawing Leaf
Software : Corel DRAW X3
Level : Intermediate

Concept: We have used Adobe Photoshop and CorelDRAW together to design these lessons. You will get an idea how these two softwares can be used together to achieve wonderful effects. Adobe Photoshop is a raster program whereas CorelDRAW is a vector tool. Mostly, in the beginning, you can try CorelDRAW to draw the shapes, outlines with the help of its powerful drawing and editing facilities and then fill those shapes using Adobe Photoshop.

We have taken the sample of textile artwork as a reference. First, we will learn to draw small objects.

These lessons are particularly useful for those who can not draw by free hand method.

1. Open Corel DRAW. Select Bezier Tool to draw a small leaf marked with red circle in the image. Draw triangle as shown below using bezier tool. Keep the triangle selected.

2. Select Shape Tool. Drag around the triangle to select all the three points.

3. Click "Convert Line To Curve" (marked with red circle) in the property bar.

4. Select the left corner Node (marked with red circle) using shape tool.

5. Click "Make Node Symmetrical" (marked with red circle) in the property bar.

6. You get the curved shape that can be edited by dragging the bezier handle (marked with red circle) or the node itself (marked with green circle0.

7. Edit the shape to make a leaf using shape tool on bezier handle and the node.

8. Fill the leaf with some color and remove the outline.

9. We will export the leaf in Photoshop to fill the color as shown in the sample artwork.

File > Export (Select "Selected only" in the options if there are many object on the page)

10. Export with Jpeg format.

11. Open the file in photoshop. We will learn painting in the next lesson.