Sketches: Looked at a variety of butterflies to get an idea of shapes. There's a lot of variety with the wings, body & antennae. I like the larger wings more but intend to have a mix of sizes so that I can produce a pattern from my butterflies created in Illustrator. I'm intrigued to see how side views as well as views from above will work.

Now to dive into Illustrator!

Getting comfortable with the shape tools, also the pathfinder, transform & rotate options to create basic wing shapes.

 

I really enjoyed experimenting with the shapes & pathfinder options. It really is great that you can develop so many different styles from altering the basic shapes. I've picked up some of the keyboard shortcuts too which makes work flow much quicker!

 Using the blend option to create borders is fantastic! I experimented with the star shape on the rounded rectangle to get the last border. That one is my favourite. Now to use these as embellishments for my wings!

 

Embellishments added using borders. 

 

I'm looking forward to adding more features to my butterflies, such as antennae and other markings.