# Drawing Flowers in Procreate: Find Your Floral Illustration Style - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/drawing-flowers-in-procreate-find-your-floral-illustration-style/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Illustration & Drawing · Solid intro · Rated 7 /10 # Drawing Flowers in Procreate: Find Your Floral Illustration Style By Gareth B. Davies · Updated August 2026 Iva Mikles · Illustrator | Top Teacher | Art Side of Life Intermediate · 129 min A working illustrator walks through her actual flower-drawing process, but the how-to-develop-a-style advice stays mostly abstract rather than exercise-driven. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fdrawing-flowers-in-procreate-find-your-floral-illustration-style%2F1816125293) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## A working process, demonstrated rather than theorized Iva Mikles structures this class around her own studio workflow, and that shows in both its strengths and its gaps. The first half is a set of shape-based warm-ups: petals reduced to teardrops, half circles, almonds, and ovals, then varied through overlap, spacing, and perspective (front, three-quarter, side view). Leaves get the same treatment, run through edge shape, stem placement, and size gradients from base to tip. None of this is revolutionary, but it is concrete and demonstrated stroke by stroke, which makes it easy to copy along with a stylus in hand rather than just nodding at a principle. The composition lesson is where the course earns its keep. Mikles walks through picking an overall silhouette (circle, rectangle), choosing a number of main flower elements, layering them with overlap, and pointing supporting greenery outward from a shared center, as if the bouquet were tied with a ribbon. It is a simple mental model, but it is the kind of thing that is hard to arrive at on your own and genuinely transfers to any composition, floral or not. ## Where the demo carries the weight The back half is a long, single demonstration: sketch to thumbnail, line art, leaves, shadows, highlights, then leaf detailing, all built around one peony composition. The technical specifics are useful and specific: setting a sketch layer to multiply, using clipping masks to keep detail brushwork inside a leaf's base color, testing shadow blending modes (multiply, among others) before settling on one, and merging layers strategically to manage Procreate's layer limits on large canvases. Anyone comfortable with Procreate's interface will pick up real, reusable technique here. The catch is that this section assumes that comfort already exists. Layers, clipping masks, blending modes, and canvas RAM limits are used as tools, not explained as concepts, so a true beginner to digital illustration will lose the thread during the demo lessons even while following the drawing logic fine. The class is billed as suitable for beginners, but it is really a beginner-to-flowers class for an intermediate-to-software artist. The closing style lesson is the most conceptual and least hands-on portion. It offers a genuinely useful checklist, detail level, shading approach, stylization, color, composition density, realism, medium, for auditing your own artistic choices, and points to real reference sources (antique Japanese prints, Alphonse Mucha, botanical illustration). But it stays a checklist. There is no exercise forcing you to apply it, so the value depends entirely on how much initiative the viewer brings afterward. Overall, the class does what it promises for the audience it actually suits: it hands over a specific, repeatable process for taking flowers from loose imagined shapes to a finished layered illustration, anchored in one clear demo project. It is less successful at teaching style development as an active skill, that part reads more like a well-organized reflection than a taught technique. The standout The composition-planning lesson, where Mikles builds a bouquet from an overall silhouette shape, four main flowers at varied angles, and outward-radiating greenery, gives a genuinely reusable formula for arranging any floral piece. ## What you will learn - · How to simplify flower petals into basic shapes (teardrops, half circles, almonds) and vary them with overlap, spacing, and bent edges - · How to build leaf variety through shape, edge style, and stem placement (symmetrical vs. asymmetrical, size gradients) - · How to plan a floral composition's silhouette using an overall shape, main elements, overlap, and varied viewing angles - · A full sketch-to-finish Procreate workflow: line art, base color, shadows via clipping masks and blending modes, then highlights - · How to test a color palette on a small thumbnail before committing it to the full illustration - · How to build a personal floral style by auditing details, texture, shape stylization, color, and composition choices against reference artists Best for: Illustrators who already know their software's basics and want a working artist's repeatable process for turning loose flower sketches into a finished layered piece. Skip it if: Total beginners to digital drawing or Procreate's interface, since the class assumes comfort with layers, clipping masks, and blending modes and spends no time explaining them. Engaging Teacher Helpful Examples Organization of Lessons Clarity of Instruction [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fdrawing-flowers-in-procreate-find-your-floral-illustration-style%2F1816125293)