Team member feature: archsehgal

Etsy shop: http://archsehgal.etsy.com
Blog: http://archanadraws.blogspot.com

I love drawing and making things out of my drawings.  I typically do a lot of post-processing in Photoshop to take my creation a step further.  I find it fascinating how technology can transform and enhance art.  While most everything I create turns into a stationery item in my Etsy shop, some pieces are standalone prints.

Today I'll walk through the process I went through to create these butterfly blank/note cards:

 

I'd been wanting to do something involving butterflies for a while but found the task of drawing a butterfly daunting, because I was afraid it wouldn't turn out the way I'd want it to.   I started off with this pencil drawing:

 

I decided not to bother drawing the other halves because I knew I'd never get them exactly right.  I scanned in this image and opened it up in Photoshop.  I duplicated the wings and flipped them to match up, darkened the blacks, and took out the middle whites.

 

At this point I had several decisions to make: what colours would I use?  How would I fill in the spaces?  I came up with a couple of versions:

and

Once I'd come up with these 2 versions, I decided on the multi-coloured version and took it one step further: overlaid wings to create flying effect, and more colour variations.

 

The final step was to come up with a layout for a card:

 

These are available for sale at my Etsy shop, and can be customized with a message, or can be recreated in an entirely new layout for a different type of card.  Thanks for stopping by!