Making a fishy greeting card in Adobe Illustrator
Hello hello hello!
And welcome to my very first entry in my blog series, Art Journal! I plan to write about my art projects, local art events, stationery goods, and anything related to arts and crafts that catches my eye. I have wanted to do a blog of sorts for a long time. Now that I am re-learning Illustrator, it gives me a great opportunity to share my process.
Several years ago I took an Adobe Illustrator class for a semester in college. Even though my professor was so great and helpful, I struggled to learn the program. I tend to fall off of subjects that I want to improve on, but I can’t seem to learn fast enough to keep up. Well, I’ve decided to be a lot more patient with myself. I have a lineup of projects I’d like to work on primarily using Illustrator. I’d like to share the process with others who may struggle with the program or are just curious about what my art-making process looks like!
So first, it starts with a concept! I wanted to first focus on a greeting card since I work at a stationery store and I am a huge fan of snail mail! I love physical media and have been wanting to make more of my own products.
I am drawn to animals and decided to make my first theme based on some silvery fish I saw at the aquarium. I decided to use this image:
Shiner Surfperch fish!
Gathering references is so important! I understand that some artists hesitate because they don’t want to copy someone else’s style or idea. It’s important to find images to reference since many of us creatives have influences that affect our tastes! A good idea is to scour for real-life examples, artists’ interpretations, and even your own images, like the photo I included above.
I chose a few fish to simplify the final illustration.
There are a lot of fish in this image. I decided to simplify the photo by only going with a handful of fish that woud help my composition. I also only included a few of the plants since I only wanted a few to scatter around the fish.
In my final illustration, I flipped the direction the fish are swimming in for the sake of changing the elements of the photo even more. Once I had a rough idea of what I wanted, I sketched everything in Procreate. I like to have a lot more flexibility in sketching before starting any illustration.
I sketched these fish with a lower opacity brush in Procreate.
Once I had a clear idea of what I wanted the outline to look like, I went over the sketch layer with a hard black ink brush. This part is super important, as I planned to import the sketch directly into Illustrator so I could use the live trace feature. Maybe I could directly draw in Illustrator, but I find that sketching on paper or in procreate is much quicker for me.
I referenced Illustrator’s website for how to set up the document for a standard greeting card size. You can find that info here:
Once I opened two art boards (for the front and back of the card) it was time to import my sketch. Once I hit live trace, I realized I had not done a good job tracing in Procreate! The properties of the brush I was using made it so that the brush had a glaze effect and was not at 100% opacity. Now I was tasked with cleaning up the shakiness of my hand sketches using the smooth tool. I also used the shape builder tool to subtract the shapes left behind with lower opacity. Luckily I separated the fish and the kelp into two separate layers, so I was able to edit them without affecting the other.
Then it was time for the hard part (coloring)! I started with the fish first, using the gradient tool to give them that silvery color I was looking to recreate.
Adding gradients to each individual fish was easy to do with the gradient tool.
Once I settled on some colors I liked, I was able to edit each fish individually to give them a shiny sheen that would make sense based on their size and in what direction they were facing. The same process was true with the kelp. I tried some unexpected colors like reds, oranges, and whites. Ultimately I stuck with the green since I really wanted the fish to be the focus of the card.
I focused so much on the colors that the line work became a second thought. I wasn’t too fond of the default options for the fish in Illustrator, so I looked for some free options online. This was also a point of friction for me since I hadn’t used the program too much before. I had hardly any brushes that I liked. After a solid hour of perusing online, I settled on a few sketchy textured brushes. I applied them to everything except the background of the rocks and the small blue fish. I also chose different line widths to create some visual variety.
Once I was done, I chose a nice blue gradient to replicate the light shining through the ocean water. I applied the deepest color to the back of the card for a nice consistency. I also added a little fish and bubble icon to the back, along with information on how to find more of my work!
The final greeting card!
I was surprised at how I was liking the card! Although I have to admit I still prefer the well-known process of procreate, it was really nice being able to edit everything without losing image quality. I find that I can be a tad more experimental in Illustrator. It’s a powerful feeling knowing that I can edit even how my line work looks!
I think my biggest appreciations came from this program’s ability to edit everything so easily without losing image quality (which in turns saves SO MUCH TIME). Although I can definitely work on my speed, I think the quality of the work should come before time constraints when it comes to my own personal work.
In case you’d like to see some fun greeting cards, check out these links for some eye candy!
https://www.nextchapterstudio.com/collections/cards
https://mrboddington.com/collections/greeting-cards
And that’s all for my first entry. Thanks for reading all the way through. See you next time!
