How To: Illustrator–Quick Wrinkle Flowers

For quick spring flowers to kick up a spring illustration, try Illustrator’s polar grid and wrinkle tool along with Illustrator’s brushes.

When you need a quick addition to an illustration, try these wrinkle tool flowers. They take seconds to make in Adobe Illustrator (versions 10 and up), and can have many different looks by using different colors and brushes.

Step 1. Set a stroke color in the toolbox, then choose the Polar Grid tool from the toolbox.

Step 2. Click on an empty area of the page to open the Polar Grid options. Set these options then click OK to create the grid on the page.

Step 3. You should have a simple grid like this:

Step 4. Activate the wrinkle tool. The Wrinkle Tool creates uneven edges on an object. It’s similar to using the Roughen filter or effect available from the Filter or Effect menu, but with a local effect rather than global since it only affects the part of the object you apply the tool to. It adds random points to a path.

Step 5. Double click on the wrinkle tool in the toolbox to open the options. Click the Reset button to set the tool’s options back to default. Make sure Show Brush Size is checked. Click OK to close the options.

Step 6. Hold the shift and opt/alt keys and position the brush over the grid. Click and drag to resize the brush size so it’s larger than the polar grid, and click once in the center of the grid to apply the wrinkles to the grid.

Step 7. Experiment with the options settings and see how different settings or moving the tool affect the flower. Below is the original grid and three variations using various colors for the fill and stroke.

Step 8. Add some leaves using the pen or pencil tool, and then use Illustrator’s brushes and add brush strokes to the flowers and leaves for a new look. To apply brushes, open the brushes palette and with the flower selected, click on a brush in the palette.

How-To’s Day is a regular Designorati feature in which we give you fresh tutorials across all of Designorati. How-To’s Day happens every other Tuesday.