It’s very common these days to see swirls and flourishes within graphic design. You can use brushes or vectors to achieve this look, but if you want to customize your own you’ll have to dig in and spend some time creating them. You should check out My 10 Favorite Swirls and Decorative Brush Sets post for some awesome free design elements you can download. This tutorial will cover some of the techniques you can use to create your own beautiful swirls and flourishes.
A quick thanks to Zoe who requested a tutorial like this, by dropping me a comment using my Community Suggestion Box. If their is a tutorial you would like to see covered, I would love to see your suggestions there.
Design with Swirls and Flourishes Tutorial
Step 1
Open up Illustrator and create a new document. All the shapes I’m gonna draw are merely suggestions and I would encourage you to experiment with your own shapes and styles. Grab the pen tool and draw a nice wavy line.
Step 2
Throughout this tutorial we are going to create brushes and symbols to help us make the shapes. I want the vines to begin wide and gradually get thinner, so we are going to use a simple custom brush to create this look. Grab the pen tool or use a 3 sided polygon and draw a long triangle shape like below.
Step 3
Open up the brushes palette. If it’s not open click Window->Brushes. Drag the shape you made over to the brush palette. In the options that appear choose New Art Brush. In the second window of options keep all the defaults except change the colorization method from the dropdown menu to tints. That step is important if you want to change the color of the brush later.
Step 4
Click on the swirl you made and then the new brush you made to apply the brush. You should now have a simple wide to narrow swirl shape like below.
Step 5
Next up we are going to make a tighter swirl at the end of our line utilizing the spiral tool. Grab the spiral tool, which is nestled by default under the line segment tool. Single click anywhere on the canvas to bring up the spiral tool options. I used the options shown below.
Step 6
Rotate and size the spiral into place.
Step 7
Draw another branch coming of the vine. I think it really helps the design look organic if you vary the size of the vines. For this branch I changed the stroke to .5.
Step 8
Now we are going to design a leaf to make it into a symbol we can use throughout the design. Grab the pen tool and draw out a leaf shape like below. Draw the basic black shape and draw a highlight in white. Use the image below as a reference.
Step 9
Open up the symbols palette (Window->Symbols). Drag your leaf that you drew over to the symbols palette. Change the name to something applicable and switch the type to graphic.
Step 10
Click and drag an instance of that leaf symbol onto your canvas. Rotate it and resize it into place at the end of the smaller vine. I also added a second smaller leaf and rotated a little more.
Step 11
Now we are going to make another brush for some of the smaller vine branches. Draw a long triangle like before, using the brush we made earlier, the pen tool or a 3 sided polygon. Then grab the ellipse tool and draw an oval at the end. Use the image below as your reference.
Step 12
Just like in step 3 select the shapes you made and drag it to the brushes palette to make a new brush. Don’t forget to select tint from the colorization method.
Step 13
Grab the pen tool or the arc tool and draw a small branch. Click on the new vine brush you created and that will give you a simple branch you can use throughout the design. Change the stroke to .25
Step 14
The rest of the vines are more of the same. I did add two more leaf symbols to help vary the look. Use the image below to add two more symbols.
Step 15
The techniques for this second large branch are all the same brushes and symbols that we’ve already stepped through. To make the thicker swirl on the right side I used the twirl tool with a .5 stroke and stroked it with the second vine brush we created. Here’s were I’ve got so far:
Step 16
Continue making swirls, branches and leaves until you have a design you’re happy with. Be creative and remember to experiment with different sizes and widths to keep the look organic. Here’s what I came up with.
Step 17
Now it’s time to add some color back into our design. If you have colors in mind that you want to use, feel free to color the image right now however you’d like. I decided to get some help from Adobe Kuler. I wanted a simple green theme for the vines. I found an awesome swatch theme called “Rainy Green Light.” If you’ve never used Kuler before you can learn a little more through a short tutorial I wrote about Using Adobe Kuler. Basically, all you need to do is signup for an account so you can use their service. Sign in, find a theme you like, download the theme and place the swatches in your swatches folder within your Illustrator folders (if you are using windows, that path will most likely be: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS3\Presets\Swatches). Within Illustrator open up your newly found swatch theme by clicking on the small arrow in the top right of the swatches palette, choose Open Swatch Library and choose your theme. Kuler is an awesome service, it’s definitely worth experimenting with.
Step 18
Using your own color theme or the one you downloaded change the swirls to different colors. Play around till you get something you are happy with. Here’s where I’m at so far:
Step 19
Illustrator is perfect for making lines and vector shapes, and photoshop will service us nicely finishing off the look and adding some texture. So go ahead and open up photoshop and create a new document at the size you want. With the document opened up in Illustrator select everything, then click and drag it into your new photoshop window. Resize it and rotate it into the top left corner. Click enter to accept the placed object.
Step 20
Make a copy of the left swirl layer (while selected click Layer->Duplicate Layer). Then hit ‘ctrl, t’ to bring up the free transform tool. Rotate and place the copied flourish in the lower right portion of the canvas.
Step 21
Click on the text tool and add your text to the middle of the canvas. For the fonts I used OptimusPrinceps and Scriptina.
Step 22
Now you can add a nice design element I choose a cool bird silhouette. You can find this one in the Birds of a Feather font (letter t). All three of the fonts I used can be found for free at DaFont.
Step 23
I thought the background could use some more interest and texture. Click on the background layer and add a slight radial gradient like the one below. My colors are: #c4c083 and #f6f2ba.
Step 24
Next up, I went out and found 2 awesome free textures. If you’d like to use the same ones, you can download them here. Place the one called texture2 on the top layer. Change the layers blend mode to linear burn and the opacity to 20%.
Step 25
Place the file called texture 1 on the top layer. Change the blend mode to Darker Color and the opacity to 60%.
Step 26
I think that looks pretty slick already, but now the swirls and text looks like they could use a little texture as well. Copy the layer for texture 1 and paste it on it’s own layer at the top. Then ‘ctrl, click’ on the thumbnail in the layers palette for the left swirl to select it. Hit ‘ctrl, shift, i’ to select the inverse, then click delete to get rid of any part of that new texture layer that isn’t directly above the left swirl. Change the blend mode to Multiply and the opacity to 93%.
Step 27
Repeat these texture overlay techniques for the right swirl and the bird. For the bird layer I used Hard Light for the blend mode at 73% opacity. Here is my final result.
Your Thoughts
Let me know what you think of this tut. I love getting feedback.
Suggest a Tutorial or Article
to My Ink Blog
by Email
Twitter
Flickr
Digg
Stumble Upon
August 10th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Nice tut, now I have to draw less with my tablet!
Thank you!
August 11th, 2008 at 5:57 am
Fantastic stuff, I love it. I love the fact you included step 17 about the colour, good touch. And I just love the final result. Good stuff, keep it up.
liam’s last post was… 32 Examples of Websites with a Brave colour Scheme
August 11th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Lovely tutorial
August 11th, 2008 at 9:30 am
i like how you created a brush to fill the line, very clever and useful
Thanks
August 11th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I like it
I am going to try perfect this, I have always just used stock (there are so many out there and so much less time consuming) but it always pays to know how to do it.
Jacob Cass’s last post was… Don’t Read This If You Do Not Want More Email
August 11th, 2008 at 9:47 am
I’m flattered by the great response to this tutorial so far. Glad you guys liked it!
August 11th, 2008 at 11:50 am
WOW! this is awesome! thanks SO much.
August 11th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
it seems like everybody loves those flourishes and stuff nowadays..!! thnx good tutorial.. it came just when i needed!!
August 11th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Very nice tutorial. This type of design is really popular right now, so this is a very relevant skill for designers. Thanks.
Steven Snell’s last post was… Interview with Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks
August 11th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Funny, I’ve been looking into adding some more “swing” to my design pieces. This tutorial will help a lot, thanks much for posting!
August 12th, 2008 at 5:20 am
Very nice tutorial! Very well explained. I’m still a newby with Adobe Illustrator so I found this quite useful. Keep up the good work.
August 12th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Shanna, Your welcome!
Manuel, It’s amazing how much of this sort of design work you can find right now, but there’s not a ton written on how to achieve it. I’m glad it came in handy for you.
Steven, Thanks for the comment, nice interview with Chris btw.
Affordable, Yeah, some flourishes will definitely do the trick!
Eli, Definitely get your hands dirty in Illustrator. I’m just starting to really use it more myself. It’s such a powerful drawing tool. There are a lot of things you can do in Illustrator that are so much easier than trying to do it all in Photoshop.
August 12th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Power of brushes!! I wonder how boring would photoshop have been if there were no brushes and third party plugins, very nice tutorial!
August 12th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Nice work!
August 12th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Great job! Keep up the good work here.
D.A.T.’s last post was… 15 Unbelievable Photo-realistic Vector Illustrations
August 13th, 2008 at 6:05 am
i can’t believe I only just got round to reading this! Awesome tutorial - one of your best. I love the outcome
Tom Ross’s last post was… 3 New Advertisers
August 13th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Thanks everyone for the kind words. If you step through this tutorial and come up with an awesome result, I’d love to see it. You can showcase it in the MyInkBlog Flickr group.
August 13th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Fantastic tutorial … I have seen hundreds or swirly brushes but nobody explained how to make them yourself. the spiral tool explains a lot :).
Thanks a lot!
August 14th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Professionally, I’ve been out of graphic design for almost two years, and even with my personal projects, I can feel myself getting rusty. This was a great tutorial. I always used stock for this sort of thing. Wish I had read this a few years ago. Thanks for posting!
August 15th, 2008 at 9:08 am
How can I change the color on the leaf? It stays black. And the white highlight on it stays white when I add the gradient on photoshop. But it’s beautiful and really easy! Will use it for my stationery kit!
August 15th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Great tut maaaan !!
August 15th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Percept, The spiral tool is an awesome time saver, imagine doing those spirals with the pen tool!
DJ, I was the same way, and I still will use stock a lot of times, but it’s a nice skill to know if you want to customize the look of your designs.
Maria, Thanks for your comment, that info should be in the tut, I’ll have to change that later today. You can change the color of the leaves within Illustrator by right clicking on the symbol you dragged out. In the list of options that appear choose ‘Break Link to Symbol’, then right click again and choose ‘Ungroup’ this will give you separate shapes that you can work with. Then it’s just a matter of clicking on the leaf and editing the color. BTW if you make some stationery using these techniques, I’d love to see it. You should post at the MyInkBlog Flickr group.
Rafeek, Thanks!
August 17th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
The regular pen with spiro mode in inkscape would allow you to manipulate this effect with much more precision and integrity.
Have you tried it ?
August 17th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
andy, I’ve never used Inkscape, but I’ll have to give it a try one of these days, thanks for the suggestion!
August 18th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
This is exactly what I was looking for. I intend to create these swirls and flourishes for Flash and then add an animated mask to give the effect of a growing plant.
The tutorial is clear and concise. I also liked the last bit on textures and colors; these details really add to the professional look of the finished result. Andrew, excellent job! Please continue to write more tutorials like this one.
August 19th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Russell, that would be an awesome use for this tutorial. I’d love to see the finished product if you come up with something great. Thanks for the kind words, I will try to continue to write useful tuts!
Katie, So glad you liked the tutorial. The power of customizing your own brushes will open up worlds of design options to you.
August 21st, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Andrew, I really must say…this was a great tutorial. Keep up the good work here.
August 21st, 2008 at 5:00 pm
This helped so much for my last poster project. Thanks.
August 21st, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Wow, that’s gorgeous work. KULER IS AMAZING! And so are textures.
August 25th, 2008 at 6:44 am
Nice tutorial Keep up
August 27th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Great Tutorial
Muchas Gracias!
August 29th, 2008 at 9:23 am
i’ve been struggling with making swirly lines/shapes, and you just made it so super simple!! thanks for the great tut!
September 1st, 2008 at 1:25 pm
love the tute! have always wondered how you make those curves and now i know. a lot easier than what i thought it would be! thanks!
September 1st, 2008 at 2:34 pm
How do you extract the texture files given in step 24??
September 1st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
@Peter You can use most any unzip program to handle .rar files. Check out this free download for WinRAR. http://www.download.com/WinRAR/3000-2250_4-10007677.html
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:24 am
nice colors and excellent work !
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:07 pm
absolutely smashing. thanks for sharing your talent!
September 4th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
very nice, however I think I prefer the look without the bird so heavily textured. perhaps an overlay or a screen, but not hard light.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:05 am
thanks for the author
September 11th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
for the last steps when you are adding the textures, I am dragging them onto my artwork, but they are so tiny and when I expand them they become distorted, how exactly did you get yours to go in over the whole piece?
September 12th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
@Melissa What size document are you working on? If you need full res free textures, check out places like http://www.grungetextures.com, http://www.textureking.com and http://www.highresolutiontextures.com/ They all have some awesome stuff!
September 16th, 2008 at 6:57 am
thank you…nice clear and simple…
September 17th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
u r gr8 man…..those free brushes r simply awsome.thanx
i look forward to more tutorials frm you.
vibhu’s last post was… Name On Sand
October 2nd, 2008 at 5:53 am
brilliant!! i’ve been trying to find out how to make that darn swirl thanks so much!!
aronil´s last post was… Boom De Ya Da
October 5th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
JUST what I have been looking for. Great tutorial, and easy to follow.
October 10th, 2008 at 7:26 am
this is a stunning piece of help. brilliant.
October 18th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
warmhearted,I like you man ,thanks for sharing~~
October 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
thank you so very much! I’ve finally learned how to make those swirls!!
October 24th, 2008 at 7:48 am
In step 4 when I apply the brush to the swirl I made it seems to just fill up the shape with all black and make it look like a misshaped circle. The brush doesn’t follow the swirl that I’ve drawn. What am I doing wrong here? Thanks in advance and sorry for my noobishness.. =)
October 26th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Hi,
Its a well written tutorial finally learned how good swirls are made…
Thanks a lot for sharing..
October 31st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I love it! *-*
November 5th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Great tutorial! This design theme fits nicely into what some are calling the web2.5 movement - or deconstructing clean designs to have a more organic feel to them. Nice texturizing with the background as well.
gCommerce´s last post was… LittleBigPlanet kicks off with microtransactions beginning this week
November 8th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
hi. can i know what soft ware this is? please…
November 8th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
@Al The tutorial is done in Illustrator and Photoshop.
@gCommerce Thanks, glad you liked it. Web 2.5, that’s an interesting concept. I’m certainly ready for less glossy buttons
November 11th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
yay! this was helpful. the end product is very cute. ^.^
November 12th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Hi webmaster!
November 13th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Simply the BEST ..