Lesson video

Hi, my name is Jordan Bickel and this is lesson four of six of vector drawings.

In this lesson, you're going to be learning about layers in vector drawings, and how we can rearrange them.

You're going to need permission from a parent or carer, to use their Google account, to get onto Google Drawings.

Now find a quiet place with limited distractions where you can do your best work.

Pause the video here until you're ready, and then press play to continue.

In this lesson, you will recognise that vector drawings consist of layers of objects.

To do this we're first going to identify that each added object creates a new layer in a drawing.

And then we'll identify which objects are in the front layer and which ones are in the back layer of the drawing.

And finally, we're going to change the order of layers in a vector drawing.

Looking at the picture below, you can see a vector drawing of a frog.

Now this drawing of a frog is made up of many different objects of ovals and circles.

And each object is layered on top of each other to give the overall effect of a frog.

If we see here, the very bottom layer is actually that dark green oval, and then beneath that, on top of that are two light green eyes.

And then layered on top of those, is the light green oval.

And then on top of that are the white circles to start making the eyes, and then the box circles and the small white ones to kind of give that look of a pupil, and then the two small black ovals to make the nose.

So all of these objects are layered in a certain order to create the vector drawing of a frog.

Now let's test your knowledge that you already have about layers.

Here you can see I've got two objects there, which object is in the back.

That's right.

You can see the red rectangle is actually behind the blue triangle.

Let's look at another one.

Now I've added a green circle.

Which object is in the front? Yeah.

So you can see that I've put the green circle in front of the blue triangle, which was in front of the red rectangle Here I have the same shapes from the previous slide, but the circle has been moved to the right.

Now because of this, it's hard to tell which order the shapes are in.

And it's, you can't really tell which object is at the front.

However, if I were to move the circle back on top of those other shapes, we can see that they are layered with the green circle in the front, and then the blue triangle, and then at the very back layer is the red rectangle.

Google Drawings demonstration: Layering.

In Google Drawings, you'll see, there are four different options when rearranging the order of objects.

We'll look at each of those now.

So you can see here, I've replicated the red rectangle, blue triangle and green circle that we've just looked at in our previous slides.

And now let's see what order they're in right now.

Right.

So we can see that your rectangle is with circle.

Okay, so now I can see, I have my triangle at the very bottom layer, then in the middle is the red rectangle, and then sitting on the very top is the circle.

So first we'll look at how we can send objects back.

And since my circle's on top, we'll select the circle, and I'm going to right click on my mouse.

And here I can click on order, and then you can see the four options that we have.

Since my circle's on the top, I don't have any other option here to bring it forward.

Now, if I just wanted to send my circle back one layer just right behind the rectangle, all I would need to select is send backward.

And now you can see the I've got my circles sandwiched in between the triangle and the rectangle.

So I've just sent it back behind one object.

Now, undo that to bring it forward now again, and now again if I select my circle, but this time I want to send it all the way to the very bottom layer.

So behind all the other objects.

Again I'll select the circle and right click and go to order, and now this time also select Send to back.

So whenever you select to send to back, or bring to front, it's going to pass all the other objects, and either bring it all the way right to the top or all the way straight to the back.

So this case I'm going to send to back, and my circle should be behind the red rectangle and the blue triangle.

And there you can see now it's on the very bottom layer.

Okay and so now, we will look at bringing them forwards.

These are the other two ways that we can layer objects.

So since my circle has now gone all the way straight to the back, we're going to bring it back to the front.

So I'll select my circle again, and when I right click, I'll have the option here to order, and now if I want to move just one layer forward, just go forward one object, that would just be in front of the blue triangle, all I select here is bring forward so I'll go up one object.

And so now you can see I've got my circle sandwiched in between the blue triangle and the red rectangle.

And now, we'll just mix things up a bit and let's see blue triangle is here, all the way in the back layer.

And so if I want to bring my triangle all the way back to the front in front of circle in front of rectangle, I'll select that with my right click on my mouse, and go to order.

And at this time I'll bring to front and it'll pass all of the objects and go to the very top layer.

And now you can see, we have circle, rectangle and triangle at the top.

Task one, which emojis? In this task, you're going to be changing the layers to fix the emojis.

So each emoji's face is stuck behind a yellow circle.

Get the layers in the right order, and you'll reveal which emoji it is.

For example, here you can see I have a yellow circle, but if I were to change the layers in Google Drawings, I would reveal a happy face.

So here are the four emojis that you are going to be revealing by changing the layers.

Open the link provided in the worksheet to open a copy of the activity in Google Drawings.

Then, correct the layers to reveal the emoji faces.

Pause the video here to complete your task.

Press play when you're ready to continue.

Task one, which emojis? Solution.

Here I've already opened a copy of the activity from the worksheet.

Now I'm going to use layering to reveal the hidden faces and the emojis.

So first I'll select on this one on the top left hand corner and right click so I can see the order choices here.

And, since I'm not sure how many layers there are beneath, I'm going to send straight to the back, so it will go to the very bottom layer of all the other objects that might be there behind it.

And we can see this is the smiley face.

Here all right click and choose the circle, you'll need to be careful here not to choose the heart, and I want to pick the yellow circle, right click, order and send it all the way to the back.

And now I revealed an emoji with heart eyes.

Again, here, I'll select my right clicking the yellow circle, order, and I'll send it straight to the back.

But it hasn't revealed the eyes yet.

So what I can do, now is I'm going to select the white circles, and go to order and send just backwards so I can go back one layer, but then it will still be in front of the yellow circle.

Oh, so it's the rolling eye emoji face.

And then finally, here in the last one, I'll right click on the yellow circle, and first send it straight to the back.

And here you'll see we've got the sleepy emoji face.

Task two, layering in nature.

Layering in nature.

Layering can be found in so many different places, especially in nature.

Have a look at the images below.

Pause the video here and think, how could you create these images in Google Drawings? Press play when you're ready to continue.

Let's have a closer look at the picture below and see how we can transform it into a vector drawing.

To begin with, I might use an oval shape and copy and paste it to create many different petals.

I've then actually used the fill feature, and used a gradient colour, to kind of give more of a depth of effects to the flower.

So I started with the dark purple on the outside and faded into a lighter purple on the inside.

And then again, I've used the oval to create even more petals, but this time making them slightly smaller, and instead I changed the colour to a lighter purple, fading into a white in the centre.

And then finally I've used brown circles to put into the centre of my flower.

And once I've created each of my individual layers, I'm going to then put one on top of the other, to create my final flower.

So I start with my dark purple petals in the back, and then I've layered my lighter purple petals.

It's a bit of a tongue twister.

And then finally in the middle, I've added that brown circle for the centre of my flower, Google Drawings demonstration, layering in nature.

Let's take a closer look on how we can use all of the tools that we've been learning about with a special focus on layering to recreate an image from nature.

So I've selected the picture of the lotus flower on lily pads.

So I'm going to begin by creating the petals.

So I've selected the shape tool, and I've gone to oval, and I'll click and drag to make a long petal like oval.

And now since I'm going to be copying and pasting quite a few of these petals to create the effects of the lotus flower, I'm going to first make sure I'm happy with the colour and then I can go copy and paste however many petals that I would like.

So using the fill colour tool, I'm going to actually use gradient for this.

And so to create the custom colour, I've already done one here, but this is how you can create your own custom gradient.

We're looking for that dark pink in the centre, going out to a white colour.

So I've selected a linear gradient, and the angle here 90, we won't go too much in detail here, but you can play around with that and experiment, but that's going to set it up so I have my lighter colour at the top, and my darker at the bottom.

So here I've selected on one end, my starting gradient, and we want to have that really bright white.

So we can select white there and then it's going to slowly fade into the darker colour I choose, and this colour I'm going to want my pink.

Now if you can't find the pink colour that you want here, you can always go to custom colour.

I've already found a pink that I'm going to use.

And the I'll select okay.

And now you can see I've already started to get that light at the top faded down to the pink.

But I don't want to keep that black line there.

So now I'll go to my line tool, select the shape again, and I'm going to just change that border to white.

And I can say I've got one petal, and I'm on my way to recreating that lotus flower.

So here I'm going to use copy and paste.

So I'll use the shortcuts on my keyboard, Control + C, and Control + V, to create a second pedal.

And then I will use my rotate tool to slowly start to create the effect of the petals fanning out.

Now I can continue pressing Control + V to create more petals.

Now you can see I've created quite a few petals using the rotate tool to angle them to kind of create that fanning out effect that the lotus flower has.

But now looking at what I've created so far, it's not quite the effects that I was looking for, I actually think by choosing a white border, I've lost kind of that nice white top to my petals.

So if I want to change my mind, instead of deleting it all, and starting over with an oval, I can actually click and drag my mouse, so this blue box appears, and this will let me select all of the shapes or objects that I've created.

And then I can change all of them at once.

So here I'll go back to my border colour, and maybe I think black would be too much of a contrast, but I could kind of pick one of these lighter purple colours, and see what that kind of looks like.

Ah, that looks much better.

You can see it's not standing out too much where it doesn't look natural, but now I can see more definition of the petals.

So now that I have created my flower, I'm going to add some lily pads here, using again the oval tool.

This time more of a horizontal, along wise the oval, instead of a nice long vertical one.

And I'm going to slide this green, like a nice start green, and this time I will make the border match.

Is that right? Yes, perfect.

So then I can select that shape, and remember if you don't remember the shortcut for control + C to copy, you can right click, and press copy, and then right click again, and press paste.

There we go.

And then I'm just going to kind of offset, these ovals here to give my flower a nice background.

You can see one problem I run into, since everything's the same colour.

Now I have just one nice blob, but I wasn't really looking for blobs, so again I'm going to click down, and just drag my mouse over all the shapes I want to select, and you can see my ovals they're selected and I actually again want a different border colour.

So maybe I'll go for this dark green so we can still have the definition of the shape, but it still has quite a natural effect.

There we go.

And I kind of just want to fill this space a bit more so I will copy with control + C, and then control + P, and add that here.

Now I think that looks a bit awkward, just like plopped on the top.

And so this is where I can start to use that layering to get closer to the effect I'm looking for.

So it's this oval I want to send to the back, so I'll right click, and go back to order, and this time, since I have so many objects, I want to make sure that some get sent all the way straight to the bottom layer.

So I'll select send to back.

And now I can still play with the placement there until I'm happy and get the desired effect.

So when you're happy with how you lily pads look or whichever shapes that you're doing in your drawing, now you can select all the shapes in my lotus.

Oops, I've accidentally got that so I'll click out of the box there, click and drag to select all of these petals I've created, and I'll just drag them on top of my lily pads.

Ooh, oh dear.

That is not what I wanted at all.

I still have all of the petals selected luckily.

So what I can do here, is I'm going to right click, and layers are going to save the day, I'll go back to order.

And I want that lotus flower sitting right on top of every single lily pad.

So this is a perfect opportunity to bring to front.

So bring it in front of all the other objects.

And they're sitting nicely on top of my lily pads.

And so here's my vector drawing, recreating the lotus flower nature picture.

Now it's your turn to have a go at creating your very own vector drawing, inspired by nature.

Make sure that you use layers so you can choose one of these nature vectors below, as a starting point, and you can try and recreate it, or you can choose your very own nature drawing for inspiration.

Choose one of the nature vectors to recreate, or choose your own nature drawing for inspiration.

Go to Google Drawings and start a new document to make your vector drawing.

Pause the video here to complete your task.

Press play when you're ready to continue.

Here are a few examples of vector drawings that have been inspired by nature.

We've now reached the end of lesson four.

If you'd like to, please ask your parents or carer, to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging Oak National and #learnewithOak.

I'll see you next time.