An Illustrator "Painting"

I finished my Illustrator class yesterday...unless she puts out another one and I have enough extra pennies saved up to be able to take it. I wanted to get it done this week, because of maybe being kinda busy the next couple weeks. I had done a little bit with live trace, but only to make line art better...and had never thought to put a photo in there and try it out. That was one of the lesson's I worked on yesterday and just loved the "painted" look! It may be kinda hard to see on the butterfly, until you zoom in closer, but it's got it too.

This is the photo I started out with. I cut the background out in ps, because I didn't want it in there and then took it into Illustrator and let it work it's magic. The cool thing about it is, I could go in and change colors if I was patient...cause it would take awhile to do, with all the little color changes there are on that butterfly.

As I said, it's hard to see that the butterfly looks painted...this close up may make it a little easier. Each different spot of color was changed to a separate path in Illustrator. Course I know a lot of you probably don't know all that much about paths and using the pen tool...but trust me it would take you forever to do it all by hand...cause they are a million little paths in that butterfly alone. (Ok a million may be a slight exaggeration! *giggle*)

The cool thing is, once it does it's thing, you can go in and mess with each separate path if you want, change colors, even change the shape if you want. Course as I said, with something like this, that has a "million" little paths, it would take you a LONG time to mess with each little path, but if that's what you wanted to do...more power to you. Another great thing about changing it like this is you can enlarge it if you want, without getting lots of jagged edges...although for a butterfly it was plenty big enough for anything I would want it for as it was. :)


I even took it back into ps and put a canvas texture on it (although I think I could do this in Illustrator too...just not sure how at this point)...just to see what it would look like...it was hard to see it on the full size picture till I zoomed in on it...but it doesn't look to bad. Think I'd like to try a "brush stroke" texture but I don't have one of those right now...so had to make do with the canvas.

I think I'll love the flowers I could make this way too...although this one could use a little tweaking, I was in a hurry so didn't mess with it. LOL I just have a small problem I'm trying to figure out, and I'm sure I can get help in my class with it, it's a exporting as a png problem. Anyway I do love this painted look...for now anyway...and I may have to do some pages with it, if I ever get around to it. :)

Well better go work on the dough I have raising for rolls, and find something for lunch. It's another beautiful day here, so I'm going to have to get outside soon too! Enjoy the rest of the day!