Back in the day, one of my professors used to push key commands as being integral in a good work flow. That advice always stuck with me. Now here I am, sharing key commands with people over the internet. #fullcircle Thanks for checking out this video.

Appreciate that! The select "same" feature is one of my favourite tricks for managing complicated documents.

Really appreciate the kind words Cindi. Glad to hear that you’ll be able to integrate some of these tips into your workflow!

Thank you for the kind words! Hope you have fun putting these tricks to use in your own work.

Key commands are such an important part of my workflow. I wanted to make sure my tutorials are easy to follow along with. Glad to hear that you found it helpful!

You are so welcome - That's always one of my big challenges when learning a new technique. Have to repeat it many times for it to become second nature otherwise it's pretty easy to forget.

Wow! Thank you so much for the kind words. Really means a lot to me.

You're very welcome! Keyboard commands are my bread and butter. So glad to hear that you enjoyed the video.

Thanks so much!! The select same feature is one of my faves when working on complex documents.

Really appreciate that Samuel! Glad you enjoyed the tutorial.

Thanks so much! This comment made my day. Key commands are such an important part of my workflow I'm happy to be able to share them with you.

Thanks for the wonderful comment Andrea. Glad you like the tutorials I've made so far.

Awesome! Glad to hear this was helpful.

Happy to help! Thanks for the lovely comment.

Good luck! Hope you have lots of fun exploring with these techniques.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hrFjnsRo3seagqc.html

You're very welcome! Glad to hear you enjoyed my teaching style. Means a lot to get feedback like that.

@@davewatkinscreative I try really hard to give positive feedback where I can! There is so much that people gripe and complain about these days! And there is so much awesome stuff to be glad/grateful about! Also - I really dig your playing cards and animations! Thanks for helping me level up my illustration/design game. :)

So nice of you. Glad you liked it!

You're very welcome! Appreciate your kind words.

You are very welcome. Thank you for the wonderful comment.

You're very welcome! Glad you found it helpful.

Really appreciate that! Hopefully my videos will help a bit on your learning journey.

That's great! Glad to hear you enjoyed this vid.

Glad you liked it!

Appreciate that!

You're very welcome! Glad you enjoyed it.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hrFjnsRo3seagqc.html

Awesome! Glad you found this video helpful.

Glad it was helpful! Are there any specific topics you'd like to see?

Oh, YES! If you could do a tutorial where you take a Google map (of your home town for example) and turn it into something beautiful it would be fab. A beautiful but maybe a too sophisticated example are the maps from Vianina. All the best and greetings from Munich 🍻

Hi Alexandra - Thanks so much for the suggestion. I'll take a look and see what I can come up with on the topic. Might take a bit of time so stay tuned!

Hi Alexandra - The video I promised you is live! Hope that you find this new tutorial useful. Let me know the verdict! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/sKyDa7dkztXMqKs.html

Appreciate that. Really glad that you found the tutorial easy to follow along with.

Hi Cheryl - Thats exciting! Im glad I was able to help you make the jump into Illustrator. If you have a path selected that has a stroke applied you outline it by going to (Object>Path>OutlineStroke). If you have a group of objects selected and you want to condense them into one compound path you can use the pathfinder for that. The pathfinder options can be found at (window>pathfinder) and the option you'll want to use is called "Unite"

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hrFjnsRo3seagqc.html

Thank you very much! The Rotate and Reflect tools are two of my favourites!

Thank you! Cheers!

Appreciate that!!

Thanks Rob! Glad you enjoyed it.

You’re very welcome! :)

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!!

You are very welcome! Thanks for checking out my channel.

It's all good! Learning the core technique was the important part.

Thanks so much!!

Not yet! But it's at the top of my list. I'm going to try and get to it now that my studio has been revamped.

Thanks so much for the suggestion! I'll see what I can put together for you.

Thanks for the comment Richard. Really appreciate it! I have experimented with lots of different techniques for creating these ornate radial patterns but I always find that this method provides the most control and as you mentioned the cleanest end result. I'll see what I can put together on the animation side of things for you.

Another for a look at the animation methods 🤘🏼

@@davewatkinscreative Did the animation tutorial ever happen?

It’s taken way too long…. But I finally posted the animation side to this tutorial. Thanks again for the suggestion and apologies for taking sooooo long!

The wait is finally over! Animation tut is finally up!

You're very welcome!

Not yet! That is my most requested video topic. I started one a while back but I wasn’t happy with the way it was coming together. Thanks for bringing it back to the top of my mind… I’ll have to jump back into it.

Hey there - When scaling down an object in Illustrator if you hold down the option key the transformation begins on the objects centre point. You can also hold down shift at the same time to constrain the transformation. Hope that helps!

You're totally right that option works if your guides are unlocked. That's one of the interesting things about Illustrator. There can be a few techniques to accomplish the same task.

Hey Thanks! You're right totally possible to achieve the same result with the shape builder. I can't explain the reason why but I find myself using pathfinder more often than the shape builder. Force of habit I guess?

Cheers!

Cheers!!

Hey thanks for the comment! When I'm building the animals and other elements I'll use both approaches. Sometimes I'll fit a prebuilt mandala into a space and trim it. Other times I'll build the design in place as I go. A few people have asked for a video about the mandala/animals so it's totally on my list of projects to do! You're right that the magic wand is an interesting tool. Especially when you introduce the tolerance settings and are able to select colours that are closely related. But for some reason I have always preferred to use the select menu.

@@davewatkinscreative No problem for the magic wand ^^ Sometimes I think it's weird that really good artists are using some ways to do something when there is an easier way but everyone has preferences ;) Thank you for the futur video about animals mandala :) I hope you'll have the time to do that ! Your work on the cards is amazing too, I really like the queen that we see at the beginning of the video in your back!

Really appreciate that! The queen card is one of my personal favourite pieces. If I ever end up with enough spare time I plan to make a full deck of cards in that style.

Hey thanks for the comment. I believe the PC keyboard command you need is “alt-drag” to create the copy of the selected object + the shift key to constrain the transformation. Hope that helps!

@@davewatkinscreative yes, that works! For the constraint one, alt+click, then shift to constrain. Thank you!

That's great! Glad that worked out for you.

Hey Mandy - The snap to grid option will override the smart guide snapping that I was using in this tutorial. If you turn off snap to grid and still aren't seeing those labels you can go to Preferences>SmartGuides and make sure that you turn on "Anchor/Path Labels"

Sorry about that Jana glad you were able to figure it out.- It's been so long since I've used a windows system I didn't think about that when making my tutorials.

I’ve played around with Cinema 4D in the past. Also heard a lot of good things about Blender.

There are several things I do to ensure accuracy in Illustrator. It can be frustrating when points don't fall where you want them to! When working on a radial design like this I will place a large circle in a separate locked layer so that I can snap objects and rotations to its centre point using the smart guides (command U to toggle these guides on and off). I have also adjusted the snapping tolerance of the smart guides in the preferences to 10pt. This means your smart guides will snap to the centre or other guides/objects from a greater distance. I also verify that I'm placing objects in the correct location a lot by zooming right in to ensure correct alignment (holding the option key and using a scroll wheel will zoom in or out). Also be sure that "Snap to Pixel" and "Snap to Grid" are turned off in the view menu as those can sometime interfere with the snap to guide/point that you wanted to happen. Hope these tricks will help you out.

@@davewatkinscreative Thanks. I step by step did it. But somehow it shows me mostly the horizontal and vertical snap lines. Not the locked circle's center.

Maybe the ctrl+5 was the missing step.

Hey Mike thanks for subscribing!

A few people have requested the same thing. I will certainly be adding one to the channel. Stay tuned!

Thank U!!! Great video like always 🤩😌😊

Hey Colin. The key command 'R' is only used to access the rotate tool (which can also be found in the tool bar). To achieve the same result I demonstrated what you'll have to do is to have an object or group of objects selected then press R to use the rotate tool then you need to hold down the option key and click on the location where you want to set your centre point. This will pull up the rotate dialog box and will allow you to create copies around a centre point that was not the default centre of the object. Let me know if that solves your problem.

@@davewatkinscreative Thank Dave, that worked. The piece that didn't quite work for me was pressing the R at the right time ie prior to setting the degrees. This did not automatically bring up the rotate dialogue box so I had to open it after pressing R. I didn't do that yesterday. Many thanks, Colin

Hey Colin! Glad that solved the issue that you were having. Hope the rest of the tutorial works out for you.

@@davewatkinscreative Thanks! I was having the same problem

@@davewatkinscreative Thank you so much I was having same problem as well

I'll take a look and see what I can do!

This is on my list of tutorials to make. Hoping to get to it soon.

The option key is on a Mac keyboard. If you’re using PC you’ll want to use the Alt key instead. Let me know if that helps.

@@davewatkinscreative googled it. I am on your geometric video, I want to learn how to do mandalas. I have windows. cannot duplicate the shape ugg sorry I am new to this

Hey! Just responded to your other comment with a run down of how I use the rotate tool and transform again key command to create my radial designs. Let me know if that process ends up working for you.

Glad you enjoyed the video. I actually do have those poker suits up for licensing on Adobe Stock. stock.adobe.com/ca/images/four-ornate-poker-suits/194540017

@@davewatkinscreative Or maybe I can download your vector images on other platform, maybe shatterstoke

Looks like you found me on Shutterstock! Same username as Adobe Stock

@@davewatkinscreative If I buy and download your cool playing card suits, so can use it in my commercial projects, like playing cards?

So there's a few things to consider when condensing your artwork down into compound paths. The first is that you'll need to outline strokes as they can cause issues when merged together. The second is how you'll select the desired elements. I usually work in sections where I can use the key command to select all (CMD + A) and then merge that together. If you're looking to merge overlapping elements of the same colour you can pick up one path with the desired colour and then through the menus us Select > Same > Fill Colour from there I use the Unite feature in the Pathfinder. I have a pathfinder basics video that covers the unite function in the first 2 minutes kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d61_qM6e1Me1f6s.html Hope that helps!

Appreciate that! :)

@@davewatkinscreative thank you for all your hard work! sharing your work flow as an artist is much appreciated and uncommon. You inspire me. Rock on brother, great channel.

Wow! I really appreciate that! Really means a lot to me. Great to hear that I'm on the right track with the channel.