Butterfly Art: Graphic Designs and Images

Butterfly art was something I became interested in after learning how to work in Adobe Illustrator. For those that don't know what illustrator is, it's a graphics program that many graphic designers, web designers, sign artists and commercial artists use to create brochures, artwork, websites, signs and just about any other digital visual creation that you see.

This series of butterflies I did while learning Adobe Illustrator through a class that I took at our local ROP (Regional Occupation Program) program. Although I did finish the class, my goal was not to earn a certificate in graphic design, but just to learn the basics so I could work with vector images when we owned our business (Signs Now Fremont)

Vector images are closed shapes, that have a beginning and an end, like letters, words, clip-art and other images that can be cut into vinyl shapes on a plotter. Most sign companies work with vector images and some also work with 4 color process images, which would be things like photographs and other 4 color images.

These images can be vector images also.

Butterflies and butterfly art are a wonderful subject to study because butterflies by nature are usually very colorful. Butterflies come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, and as you can see by my images, my butterfly art is definitely not realistic, although you know they are butterflies.

Which is why being an artist is so much fun - you can create realistic images or you can make up things that are based on your own imagination.

If you are learning Adobe Illustrator, creating butterflies is a good way to learn the program, as you can experiment with most of the tools that Adobe Illustrator offers. Although I did not learn every single tool on illustrator, I did learn enough to work with vector images in our business, and I also learned enough to create this whole series of butterfly art, which I now consider a series in my art portfolio.

If you asked me to re-create them exactly I would probably never be able to do that, because as you can see, each one is totally unique and one of a kind.

One of my butterfly art works, called Moon flies (below), was created by importing an image of the moon from my camera phone, then overlapping butterfly images over the photo. As you can see, the photo of the moon was not the greatest resolution, but it actually worked out OK as the moon image sort of works with the butterflies. Years ago when I created Moon flies, we did not have the greatest of resolution on our camera phones, so photos taken then do sometimes have sketchy resolution (resolution is how many dots per square inch) The better your resolution, the better your photo turns out.

Most camera phones now have pretty decent resolution, so you can get some pretty nice photos. The problems with resolution usually occur whens you try to blow them up, and that's when you see a lot of dots and the result is sometimes poor. Graphic artists doing work on the web always want the best resolution possible for the best outcome.

It's always better to work with a higher resolution image then tweak it down, than to start out with a poor image and try to enhance it.

Butterflies are a fun thing to make, paint, create and work with. Although I may never go back to creating more butterflies in Adobe Illustrator, it's a fun series of art to look back on. I also use these images in some of my work now like a business card I created, and for images in a power-point presentation that was created for a Easter Sunday church service.

I have also made and printed out everyday greeting cards using my butterfly art images.

If you decide to experiment in Adobe Illustrator and make some butterflies, always remember to save your work in various formats as you never know what you may want to use them for in the future. I have my butterfly artwork saved in various formats, and also plan on creating a whole series at my Zazzle store using the images I have created.