'Tis the Season for Wedding Design!

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It's a gray, windy, and chilly day in Chicagoland, but I've got flowers, brides, and lots of color filling my day! January is when I start to receive a lot of wedding-oriented orders, as spring bridal showers and summer weddings are being planned. 

I love to illustrate and incorporate floral illustrations into my work whenever possible, so this time of year is busy exploring new compositions and techniques. While traditionally I draw my illustrations on paper and then scan them in, I recently started using a digital illustration app on the iPad called Procreate and the Apple Pencil. 


Now, Procreate has been around for a couple of years and many illustrators and lettering artists have been using it for quite a while, but I was slow to jump on the bandwagon because I really enjoy working by hand. BUT, I have to admit, I started using Procreate during my busy holiday season and it dramatically cut down the time it takes to create artwork, allowing me to output many more unique designs. 

So here's a quick overview on how I created these floral illustrations. First of all, I look for flowers and bouquets as inspiration. For this shower invitation, I was told that it will be a "rustic wedding at a family farm that has been turned into a winery. Her colors are Dark teal & Navy and her flower colors will be orange, gold, and plum." I collected images that I felt fit that description and created a collage of reference.


I can then save that collage as an image, and bring it into Procreate for reference. I often trace the flowers from these images to get the basic shapes. There are many Procreate drawing tools to chose from, but I usually use the Monoline Pen or Studio Pen.


For the lettering, I select a brush from the Calligraphy palette. As you can see, I like to keep everything in black so it's easy to manipulate once I transfer it to Adobe Illustrator. You can colorize your illustrations in Procreate, but it creates raster images, and I prefer to work in vector, so I save that for AI.


After my illustrations are complete, I hide the collage image and export my illustrations as PNG files, transfer them via AirDrop to my desktop computer, then open them up in AI to be Image Traced (converted to vector.

In Illustrator, I add color and move the illustrations around to make bouquets. After the illustrations and lettering are complete, I add in the details of the event.


Voila! When these invitations go to print, I will order my favorite cotton paper: Savoy 100% Cotton Card Stock. I will also recommend a woodgrain envelope to coordinate with the "rustic wedding" them. I love the Gmund Savannah



If you have an iPad and love to draw, the Procreate app is definitely worth exploring. The more I use it, the more I am in awe of it's capabilities! So much fun.

Happy creating! XOXO, Erin @eringermandesign


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