I'm really knackered as I write this. So I’m afraid that this exercise will be short and sweet. I'm doing this at 11.30 a.m. because I live in hope that one day somebody might actually post a comment to let me know that I'm not alone in this world.

For the record this exercise takes advantage of Illustrator's Symbol tools to very quickly create a bunch of flowers.

1. Begin with a simple square. I've made sure that this one is aligned to the centre of the page. Don't ask why – it's the anorak in me coming to the surface again. Now go to Object> Path> Add Anchor Points. It's important that you do this or your flower will end up looking pretty crappy.



2. Now the fun bit. Add a fill and a stroke to the square and then Go to Effect> Distort And Transform> Pucker And Bloat. Turn on the preview, place your cursor in the field and use the up and down arrows to magically create a flower. Far better than drawing it. Anyone out there agree? No?



3. Select Object> Expand Appearance. Now drag the flower into the Symbol palette. Make the symbol a graphic in the options dialogue box that appears. Now delete the original flower. You don't need it any more.



4. More fun: tear off the Symbol tools for ease of use. Select the Symbol Sprayer tool and begin painting your flowers. Far cheaper than buying a bunch...



5. Now it's time to be a little creative. Give your flowers a more random appearance with liberal use of the Symbol tools. Here I've used the Shifter, the Scruncher, the Sizer and the Spinner tools.

Remember that you can double-click on any of the tools to adjust their settings. Also remember that you can reverse the tools' function by holding down the alt key.



6. Next apply the Screener and Stainer tools. For the latter tool you must first select a fill from the Swatches palette. Here I've used four or five different colours to further randomize the flowers' appearance.



7. Next create a new layer and move it beneath the existing layer. Draw a box that fills the entire artboard and add a gradient by clicking on the middle squre icon at the base of the Tools palette.



8. Move over to the Gradient palette and adjust the colours by clicking on a gradient handle and alt-clicking on the colour of your choice in the Swatches palette. Now use the Gradient tool to change the angle of the gradient as show below.



9. Complete the task by selecting the flowers and adding the obligatory drop shadow. I always think that drop shadows are the best way of hiding poor design.