Can you make a beautiful, folk-art inspired wreath using 5 lines of symmetry with Procreate? Absolutely! Creating a five-pointed wreath with a folk-art style design requires just a little help from the symmetry tool and it’s something anyone with minimal Procreate experience can do. In this article, you’ll find out how to take a few basic floral shapes and combine them with just five lines of symmetry to create an interesting and beautiful wreath. You’ll also learn how to use the rotate tool to adjust the symmetry to create an eye-catching design that’s easy to personalize. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to make your very own folk-art style wreath that you’ll be proud to show off.
A note on (over)using the rotate tool in Procreate
The main problem with the rotate tool in Procreate is that every time you duplicate and rotate a selection in, you will notice that the edges of your illustration will start to get soft and blurry. It’s especially noticeable if you are using a textured brush. Your nice textured lines can become fuzzy and blurred after they are interpolated multiple times.
Interpolation is the method used to adjust the pixels in an image when scaled, rotated, or transformed. Here’s what it says in the Procreate Manual:
Every time you resize an image, the interpolation process happens again. After a few times, you might start to see the edges in your image degrading and looking fuzzy. Think of this like making a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. You lose a little more quality each time you transform. Try to avoid repeatedly transforming the same part of your image.
So, my biggest tip is to try to do all your transforming and rotating in your sketch layer only. Image quality doesn’t matter for the sketch. Then you can trace over all of that for your final image and keep your nice textured edges!
Video Tutorial
Watch the full tutorial below or on my YouTube channel. Don’t forget to subscribe to see more Procreate tutorials like this!
A reminder on the maths!
For this folk art wreath, I used the symmetry tool to draw one section of it and then duplicated it and rotated it 72° each time to complete the circle and have it repeat 5 times. (360/5=72) By the last time I transformed it, the sketched section was very blurry, but it was ok because I could trace over the top for my final motifs and retain the detail and texture.
By following these instructions, you can easily create a simple folk-art style floral wreath using 5 lines of symmetry with Procreate. Although this design is simple enough for any beginner, challenging yourself with more complex designs can push your skills even further. Start simple and have fun exploring the possibilities of what you can create. As Pablo Picasso once said, “The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.” Leave your inhibitions at the door, and don’t be afraid to experiment and explore with Procreate.
Happy creating!!