Draw a Technical Illustration Candle Cutaway Holiday Card

Choose File → New, enter 2100 × 1500 pixels and click Create. Click the Background row, set the foreground to #101827, pick the Fill tool and click the canvas. Then select Layer 1 and delete it with the trash button at the bottom of the Layers panel.

Click the top ruler at 150, 1050 and 1950 to drop three vertical guides: the left margin, the centre line and the right margin. The candle will stand on the centre line. Click the left ruler at 650 and 1200 for the top of the glass and its base.

Add a layer called Tile. Pick the Pencil, set Size to 1 and the foreground to #22314D. Zoom in on the top-left corner. Click at the very corner, then Shift-click 50 px to the right, and do the same 50 px down, so you have an L along the top and left edges of a 50 px square. Switch to #2E4166 and Size 2 and draw a second, bigger L for a 250 px square just to the right of the first.

Draw a Rectangular Marquee exactly over the small square and choose Edit → Define Pattern. Marquee the big square and define it too. Then delete Tile.

Add a layer called Grid Minor. Marquee the board 66 px in from every edge, which is where the inner border will sit, and choose Edit → Fill with Pattern…, pick the small pattern and click Apply. Add Grid Major and fill the same marquee with the big pattern. Patterns tile from the canvas corner, so both grids line up with each other.

Add a layer called Falloff. Pick the Gradient tool, set Type to Radial and open Advanced…. Give it three stops: black at 0% opacity on the left, black at 15% opacity a little past the middle, and #05080F at 85% opacity on the right. Drag from the middle of the board out to the bottom-right corner. The edges darken like a lamp-lit desk.

Add a layer called Frame. Pick the Shape tool, set Shape to Rectangle and Output to Pixels. Click the Fill swatch and Remove fill, then set the Stroke to #EFE4C8 and Width 4. Shapes grow from where you press, so press on the centre of the canvas and drag out until the box sits 50 px in from every edge. Set the width to 1 and drag a second box 16 px inside the first.

Click New Group and name it Votive. Inside it, add a layer called Contact Shadow. Draw an Elliptical Marquee 500 × 68 px centred 32 px below the base guide, fill it with black, then run Filter → Gaussian Blur with a Radius of 16 and set the layer's opacity to 30%.

Add a layer called Glass Back. With the Rectangular Marquee, drag a box from the rim guide to the base guide, 392 px wide and centred on the centre line. Pick the Elliptical Marquee, hold Shift and drag a 392 × 72 ellipse centred on the rim guide. Shift adds it to the selection. Add another 392 × 72 ellipse centred on the base guide. The three shapes merge into a tumbler.

Glass in technical drawings is "ghosted": you see through it, and only the edges catch the light. Keep the tumbler selected, pick the Gradient tool and click Advanced… to open the editor. Set four stops, all #A9D3E3, at 30%, 8%, 5% and 22% opacity from left to right. Put the second stop at about 18% along and the third at about 75%. Set Type to Linear and drag from the left edge of the glass to the right edge. Press Cmd+D.

The wax is 356 px wide, just a few pixels narrower than the inside of the glass. Add a layer called Wax Exterior. Marquee the left half of the candle from y 780 to y 1166. That's a box from the candle's left edge to the centre line. Then Shift-drag a 356 × 64 ellipse centred on the bottom of that box. Hold Alt and drag a box over everything right of the centre line to subtract the right half of the ellipse.

Fill it with a linear gradient: #5A3A12 at 0%, #D9A441 at 22%, #F3D27E at 45% and #9C6A22 at 100%. Drag from the left edge to just past the centre line. The bright band a third of the way across makes the cylinder look round.

Add a layer called Wax Top. Draw a 356 × 64 ellipse centred on the top of the wax at y 780. Hold Alt and drag a box from the centre of the ellipse down and to the right, to subtract the front-right quarter. That quarter has been cut away. Fill it with a radial gradient from #FBE7B0 to #F3D27E to #D9A441, dragging from the centre of the top to its right edge.

Add a layer called Wax Section. Marquee the right half of the candle from the centre line to its right edge, from y 780 to the bottom. This is the flat face the saw left. Fill it with a vertical linear gradient from #CFA04E at the top to #A97A2C at the bottom.

Add a layer called Melt Pool. Draw a 300 × 50 ellipse just inside the top, centred at y 782, and Alt-subtract the front-right quarter again. Fill it with a radial gradient from #FFF1C4 through #F6CD6A to #E2A84A, dragging from a little left of the centre out to its right end.

A rolled candle is a sheet of honeycomb wax wound round the wick, so the cut face shows a stripe for every turn. Add a layer called Tile, set the foreground to #9C6A22 and zoom in on an empty part of the canvas. Marquee a strip 2 px wide and 16 px tall and fill it. Then marquee a 16 × 16 square with its left edge on the strip and choose Edit → Define Pattern. Delete Tile.

Click Melt Pool and add a layer called Rolled Turns. Marquee the cut face, from 6 px right of the centre line to its right edge. Choose Edit → Fill with Pattern…, pick the stripes and click Apply. Set the layer to Multiply at 75%. You should see 11 stripes, one for each turn of the sheet.

Add a layer called Section Light. Cmd-click the Wax Section thumbnail to select the cut face. Fill it with a radial gradient from #FFE6A8 at 55% opacity to fully transparent, dragging from the top of the cut down to the bottom. Set the layer to Screen. The cut face now catches the light near the flame.

The wick sits exactly on the centre guide, and guide snapping would pull a narrow marquee onto the guide. Turn off View → Snap to Guides before you draw it. Zoom to about 150% with Cmd+scroll over the candle.

Add a layer called Wick. Marquee a strip 10 px wide centred on the guide, from y 760 down to y 1152. Fill it with a linear gradient from #B9AC8E through #F4EBD6 to #A89B7E, dragged across the strip, so it looks round. Then use the Lasso to draw the charred top: up the wick from the wax to about 90 px above it, curling over to the right in a little hook. Fill it with a gradient from #0E0A08 at the tip to #7A6A52 where it meets the wax.

Add a layer called Wick Tab. Draw a 64 × 14 ellipse at the bottom of the wick and Shift-add a 16 × 30 box above it for the crimped neck. Fill it with a grey metal gradient: #5F6670, #D9DEE4, #4A5058, dragged across it.

The saw also cut through the glass: its right wall and the right half of its base. Add a layer called Glass Section. Marquee the right wall, a 14 px strip down the outside edge of the glass, and Shift-add the right half of the base, the bottom 32 px. Fill it with #D6E6EC and set the layer to 35%.

Cut materials in drawings get 45° hatching. Add a layer called Tile, zoom in to 1600% on an empty spot and pick the Pencil at Size 1 with #DCEFF5. Click one corner of a 6 × 6 px square and Shift-click the opposite corner to draw a diagonal. Marquee the 6 × 6 square, Define Pattern, and delete Tile. Cmd-click the Glass Section thumbnail, add a layer called Glass Hatch and Fill with Pattern with the diagonal. Set it to 70%.

Add a layer called Glass Rim. Pick the Shape tool with Ellipse, no fill, a #CFEAF5 stroke and Width 3. Press on the rim guide at the centre line and drag out a 392 × 72 ellipse. Set the width to 2 and drag a slightly smaller one inside it, 364 × 62, for the inner edge of the lip.

The front-right quarter of the rim was cut away with the rest. Marquee from the centre of the rim down and to the right, past the edge of the glass, and press Delete.

Add a layer called Glass Highlights. Marquee a strip 12 px wide just inside the left edge of the glass, from just under the rim to just above the base. Fill it with a vertical white gradient: 0% at the top, 75% a third of the way down, 5% at the bottom. Run Gaussian Blur at 2.

Click Glass Back and add a layer called Glass Inner Wall. Because it sits under the wax, the lines you draw show only where the glass is empty. Pick the Brush at Size 1, Hardness 100, with #CFEAF5. Click 14 px inside the left edge of the glass, just under the rim, and Shift-click straight down to the base. Do the same 14 px inside the right edge. Set the layer to 40%.

Click Glass Highlights and add a layer called Outlines. Rebuild the glass selection from step 4: the box plus the two Shift-added ellipses. Set the foreground to #CFEAF5, choose Edit → Fill, then Select → Shrink… by 2 px and press Delete. That leaves a clean 2 px outline. It's anti-aliased, unlike the hard Stroke effect.

Do the same for the wax in #F7E7BE. Use the box from the top of the wax to the bottom, Shift-add the top and bottom ellipses, and Alt-subtract a box under the cut face so the bottom-right corner stays square.

Click Wax Exterior, so the paste lands just above it. Open the downloaded photo in another app, copy it, and press Cmd+V in Lopsy. The photo is bigger than the canvas, so Lopsy shrinks it to fit, selects it and switches to the Move tool. Rename the layer Comb Texture.

Hold Cmd and drag the bottom-right corner handle up and to the left until the photo is about 40% of its size, roughly 800 px wide. Cmd keeps the proportions. Press Cmd+D to commit. At this size the honeycomb cells are about the right scale for the candle.

With the Rectangular Marquee, select a band of the photo's honeycomb side, below the spiral top and away from the curved edges. Choose Select → Inverse and press Delete, then Cmd+D.

Soften its edges so copies will blend: Cmd-click the layer thumbnail, choose Select → Shrink… by 10, Select → Feather… by 10, Select → Inverse and press Delete. Cmd-click the thumbnail again and drag the band onto the top-left of the wax.

Cmd-click the thumbnail, press Cmd+C and then Cmd+V. A copy made inside Lopsy pastes in place, on a new layer, already selected. Drag it straight down so it overlaps the band above by about 35 px, press Cmd+D and choose Layer → Merge Down. Repeat until the column of honeycomb runs past the bottom of the candle. The soft edges hide the joins.

Cmd-click the Wax Exterior thumbnail to select the outside of the candle. Click the Comb Texture row, choose Select → Inverse and press Delete. Deselect, then choose Filter → Desaturate. In the layer's drawer, set the blend mode to Overlay and the opacity to 80%. The cells now press into the gradient underneath.

Collapse Votive and click New Group for a group called Flame. Add a layer called Luminous Zone.

Pick the Pen tool. Start at the left side of the flame, 54 px left of the centre line at y 640. Press there and drag straight up about 140 px to pull out a handle. Click once at the tip on the centre line, at y 270, for a sharp point. Press at the matching spot on the right and drag down about 80 px. Press at the bottom of the flame, at y 742 on the centre line, and drag 38 px to the left. Finally, click the first anchor to close the path. It appears in the Paths panel as Path 1. While it's selected there, its anchors stay on screen. Click the row again to deselect it when you want a clean view.

In the Paths panel, select Path 1 and click Path to Selection. Fill it with a linear gradient: #FF6A1A at the tip, #FFAA33 at 22%, #FFE08A at 50% and #FFF9E6 from 78% to the bottom. Drag from the tip to the base. Deselect.

Open the layer's effects drawer, turn on Outer Glow and set its colour to #FFB547, Size 48, Spread 10, Opacity 80.

A candle flame has distinct zones, and the callouts will point at each one.

• Outer veil: add a layer called Outer Veil, load Path 1 as a selection again, Grow it by 12 and Feather by 8. Fill it with #C9DBFF, set the layer to Screen at 45%.
• Dark zone: click Luminous Zone and add Dark Zone above it. With the Lasso, draw a narrow cone around the wick, from y 580 down to y 724 and about 40 px wide at the bottom. Feather by 2 and fill it with a gradient of #E8962A that starts transparent at the top and is solid a third of the way down. Set the layer to 70%.
• Blue zone: add Blue Zone. Load Path 1 as a selection. Hold Shift+Alt and drag a marquee across the bottom 40 px of the flame to intersect. Then Alt-drag an 88 × 28 ellipse just above the flame's base to subtract it. A thin crescent is left. Feather by 3 and fill it with #4A78FF, transparent at the top and solid at the bottom.

With Blue Zone selected, add a layer called Ember. Zoom in on the curled wick tip, draw a 10 × 8 ellipse over it and fill it with #FF5A1F. Give it an Outer Glow in #FF7A1A, Size 8, Opacity 90.

Click Outer Veil and add a layer called Lamp Glow above it. Fill it with a radial gradient of #C8741E: full opacity at the centre, 50% opacity halfway out and transparent at the edge, dragged from the middle of the flame about 260 px out. Set it to Screen at 35%. Keep the glow small. A big one turns the navy board muddy.

Collapse Flame, click New Group and call it Callouts. Add a layer called Leaders. Pick the Brush with Size 2, Hardness 100 and Spacing 10 (percent of the brush size), in #EFE4C8.

Each leader starts beside a bubble, runs level, then turns at 30° to its target. Put the left bubbles at x 680, 110 px apart starting at y 420. Put the right bubbles at x 1420, 150 px apart starting at y 590. For each leader, click 19 px from the bubble's centre, then Shift-click the elbow, then Shift-click the target. To keep every diagonal at 30°, put the elbow 1.73 times as far sideways from the target as it is up or down.

Add a 10 px dot at each target by Shift-adding small elliptical marquees and filling them. Then give the layer a Drop Shadow in #070B14 with Offset 0 / 0, Blur 3, Spread 40, Opacity 90. That dark halo keeps the lines readable where they cross the bright flame.

Add a layer called Bubbles. Pick the Shape tool with Ellipse, fill #101827, stroke #D9A441, Width 3. Click, don't drag, on each bubble position. Each click opens the Shape Size dialog. Enter 38 × 38 and click Create.

Add a layer called Airflow. Set the Brush to Size 5, Spacing 260 (percent) and Hardness 100. The high spacing turns a stroke into a row of dots. In #8FB0FF, drag a curve from just outside the rim on each side, sweeping down into the base of the flame. Cool air feeds the flame from below. In #FFB547, drag three short wavy strokes rising straight up from above the tip for the hot gas.

Add arrowheads: Lasso a small triangle at the end of each stroke, Shift-adding the others, and fill them in the matching colours.

Add a layer called Dimensions. With the Brush at Size 1 and normal spacing in #EFE4C8, Shift-click a line straight down from each side of the glass, from just under the base shadow to about y 1366. At Size 2, draw the dimension line between them at y 1350, and Lasso and fill an arrowhead at each end.

Hide the guides with View → Show Guides for now, so no click lands on one. Click the Bubbles layer before you set up the type.

Pick the Text tool. Choose Red Hat Mono, Regular, Size 17, colour #BCB39B and Align Right. Click 14 px left of each left-hand bubble and type its detail line: 1400°C · complete combustion, 1200°C · glowing soot, 600°C · unburnt wax vapour and 800°C · first ignition. Press Tab to commit each one. Switch to Align Left and type the right-hand lines 14 px right of their bubbles: braided cotton, curls to the air, beeswax liquefies at 63°C, 11 turns of foundation wax and zinc sustainer, crimped.

Then set SemiBold, Size 21, #EFE4C8 and type the names above: OUTER VEIL, LUMINOUS ZONE, DARK ZONE, BLUE ZONE on the left and WICK, MELT POOL, ROLLED COMB SHEET, WICK TAB on the right. Type the lower lines first: a click inside an existing line edits it.

With the Move tool and the arrow keys, nudge each pair so the bubble sits halfway between the two lines: the name just above its centre, the detail line just below.

Click Bubbles again. Set the Text tool to Barlow Condensed, SemiBold, Size 24, #D9A441, Align Center. Click in each bubble, type its number and press Tab. Nudge each numeral so it sits in the middle of its ring. Then turn the guides back on with View → Show Guides.

The flame is painted over the wick, but a real wick shows through the dark zone. Expand Votive, click Wick and marquee its charred top. Press Cmd+C and deselect. Collapse Votive, expand Flame and click Dark Zone. Press Cmd+V: the copy pastes in place right above it. Rename it Wick In Flame and set it to 85%.

Collapse Flame, click Callouts and make a New Group called Titles. Add a layer called Title Rule and draw a short honey line with the Brush at Size 3 under where the title will go, from the left margin about 180 px across.

With Title Rule selected, set the Text tool to Red Hat Mono, SemiBold, 18, #D9A441, Align Left. Type the kicker PLATE XII · FIG. 1 · SECTION A–A on the left margin near the top. Click Title Rule again and switch to Cormorant Garamond, SemiBold, Italic, 84, #EFE4C8. Click below the kicker and type The Anatomy of, press Enter and type a Small Light, then Tab.

The default leading is loose for a display title. Open the Text panel and set Line height to 1.05, then nudge the title so it sits between the kicker and the rule. The Text panel also sets the default for new type, so click Title Rule and set Line height back to 1.4.

With Title Rule selected, set Red Hat Mono, Regular, 15, #BCB39B, Align Right. Click on the right margin guide and type SEASON’S GREETINGS · MIDWINTER 2026. Then switch to Cormorant Garamond, Medium, Italic, 52, #F3D27E and type the greeting above it in two lines: With warmth & light and for the longest nights. With Align Right, each line ends where you clicked, so both blocks finish exactly on the margin.

Below them, in the small mono style, type three lines of specs: FLAME HEIGHT · 47 mm, BURN TIME · about 18 hours and LIGHT · roughly one candela. The candela, the unit of light, started out as the brightness of a candle.

Finally, set Align Center, Size 17, #EFE4C8 and type Ø 64 mm centred just above the dimension line.

Set the Text tool to Size 13, #EFE4C8, Align Left, click in an empty area and type DIMENSIONS IN MILLIMETRES · DO NOT SCALE. Pick the Move tool. The text gets transform handles without a selection. Hold Cmd and drag the round rotation handle off the top-right corner a quarter turn anticlockwise. Cmd snaps the angle to 15° steps, so it lands on exactly 90°. The text stays editable.

Nudge it into the gap between the right-hand labels and the border, centred top to bottom, and set the layer to 60%.

Collapse Titles, click it and make a New Group called Title Block. Add a layer called Block Frame. With the Shape tool on Rectangle, fill #111A2B, stroke #EFE4C8 at Width 2, click in the bottom-right corner and create a 497 × 230 box. Its left edge should line up with the right-hand labels and its right edge with the margin guide. Draw three 1 px Brush lines inside it: one across 100 px below the top, one 65 px below that, and one down the middle of the two lower rows.

Add a layer called Hex Mark. Set the Shape tool to Polygon, type 6 in Sides, remove the fill and use a honey Width 3 stroke. Click near the left of the top row and make a 62 × 62 hexagon. Then switch to a honey fill with no stroke and click-create a 26 × 26 hexagon in its centre.

Type BEESWAX VOTIVE in Barlow Condensed, SemiBold, 54, #EFE4C8 to the right of the hexagon. Then nudge the hexagon and the wordmark together until the space on their left equals the space on their right. In the four cells, type SECTION A–A, SCALE 3 : 1, SHEET 12 / 21 and DWG BV-1221 in Red Hat Mono Medium 16, 22 px from each cell's left rule.

Collapse Title Block and make a New Group called View B. You've copied other things since the last paste, so go back to the photo in your other app and copy it again. Then press Cmd+V and rename the layer Plan Photo. Deselect.

Drag an Elliptical Marquee around the spiral top of the candle, just inside its outer turn. In the photo the top is seen at an angle, so the ellipse is wider than it is tall. Choose Select → Inverse, press Delete and deselect.

A plan view looks straight down, so the ellipse should be a circle. Cmd-click the Plan Photo thumbnail, then drag the bottom-middle handle down until the transform box is square. Without Cmd, an edge handle stretches one way only. Press Cmd+D.

Cmd-click the thumbnail again and Cmd-drag a corner to shrink it to about 388 px across, then press Cmd+D. Drag it into the bottom-left corner. The spiral's centre sits a little off the photo's centre, so nudge it until the wick sits about 170 px right of the left margin guide and level with the middle of the gap between the labels and the bottom border. Draw a 344 px circle marquee centred on the wick, choose Select → Inverse and press Delete. That trims a clean round edge whose left side sits on the margin guide.

Run Filter → Brightness/Contrast… with Brightness 25 and Contrast 30, then Filter → Desaturate. Click the View B group row and open its drawer. Groups get adjustments instead of effects. Click Add Adjustment → Photo Filter, set Filter color to #D9A441 and Density to 85. Everything inside View B is toned to the wax's honey. That's why the next step puts the annotations in a group of their own.

Collapse View B and make a New Group called View B Notes above it. Add a layer called Plan Ring and click-create a 344 × 344 ellipse with a cream Width 3 stroke and no fill, centred on the plan.

Drafting centre lines are chain lines: long dash, gap, short dash, gap. You'll make them as patterns. Patterns repeat from the top-left corner of the canvas, so plan the tile first. It will be 24 px tall, and the dash has to fall on the plan's centre line. Divide the centre line's distance from the top by 24 and look at the remainder. That's how many pixels down the tile the dash goes (3 for this layout). Do the same with 24 and the distance from the left for the upright tile (10 here).

Add a Tile layer and zoom right in on an empty spot. Fill a 24 × 2 px dash, then a 4 px gap, a 4 × 2 px dash and another 4 px gap, and define a 36 × 24 pattern around them with the dashes at that height. Make the matching upright tile, 24 × 36, and define that too. Delete Tile.

Click Plan Ring. Marquee a 24 px tall band across the plan's centre, reaching 24 px past the ring on each side, and Fill with Pattern with the flat tile. Then marquee a 24 px wide band down through the centre and fill it with the upright tile.

Still on Plan Ring, mark the cutting plane A–A along the horizontal line. With the Brush at Size 4, draw a 30 px heavy stroke at each end of that line. At Size 2, draw a short arrow pointing up from each end and fill Lasso arrowheads. Type an A above each arrow in Barlow Condensed SemiBold 24 honey, and rename the two layers Section A Left and Section A Right so you can tell them apart.

Add a layer called Plan Glass Ring with a 372 × 372 pale-blue #CFEAF5 ellipse stroke at Width 2 and 60% opacity. It shows the glass wall around the wax.

Under the plan, type VIEW B · PLAN, AS ROLLED in Red Hat Mono SemiBold 18 cream, centred, sitting on the same baseline as the Ø 64 mm label. Below it, in 15 px #A69E88, type the credit after a photograph by Paolo Neo, public domain.

The main drawing needs to show where View B is seen from. Add a layer called View Arrow and draw a short downward arrow just above the right-hand rim, with the Brush at Size 3 and a Lasso head. Type a honey B beside it.

The flame's base sits inside the glass, so the front of the rim should cross in front of it. Expand Votive, click Glass Rim and marquee its front-left arc, from the left edge of the glass to the centre line, just under the rim guide. Press Cmd+C and deselect. Collapse Votive, expand Flame, click its top layer and press Cmd+V. Rename it Rim Front and set it to 65%.

Expand View B, click Plan Photo and Cmd-click its thumbnail. With the Move tool, drag one of the round rotation handles off a corner about 40° anticlockwise, so the wick's tail points up and to the left and stays clear of the crosshair. A circle stays a circle when it turns, so the clean edge isn't affected. Press Cmd+D.

Collapse every group, click View B Notes and add a layer called Grain. It lands above everything. Set the foreground to #808080, choose Edit → Fill, then run Filter → Add Noise… with Amount 16, Mono and Gaussian. Set the layer to Overlay at 30%. Mid grey vanishes in Overlay and leaves only a fine printed texture.

Save with File → Save Project and export with File → Quick Export PNG.