Quickdraw - 4 Leaf Clover

Here's some quick steps to make a 4 leaf clover, in the spirit of St. Patrick's day this month.  In many games, a 4 leaf clover is used to represent luck because historically, they're very rare to find.  If you find one in real life, you might keep it to bring you luck.  

If you had to use 1 small image to represent luck in your game, a 4 leaf clover would be the best way to do it.  Let's get started on drawing one

Make The Main Body

1. begin with 2 circles and a triangle
2. you'll make a kind of heart with these, which will represent 1 leaf
3. duplicate and flip this heart and make an hourglass-like shape.  Squish their width slightly so the next step works right.
4. duplicate again and rotate, starting to look more like a clover now.

1. make a dark blue outline
2. use the line tool to cut the clover like this and make each segment its own gradient
3. have a transition going from light green to a greenish blue
4. use the line tool again, this time cutting up the gradients into 2 pieces
5. shift the segments and color them slightly different colors so it looks like the leaves are split at their center
6. duplicate each segment (8 in total) into a new layer, shrink them, and make them a gradient to add a little depth to the leaves.  I made the gradient (going from center to edge) bluish green with 0% opacity > greenish yellow 75% opacity> light yellow 100% opacity
7. compose, add a stem and some details.  You might want to do some adjustments to make the gradients look more natural.  In mine, the sun is above the plant but slightly behind it so only the edges are illuminated with yellow.

It might not look hard with the steps, but getting the gradients to look good takes a little time and patience.  Your final result might not look anything like mine, even if I tried to make one again, it probably won't look the same either.  

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

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