I followed yet another really cool tutorial today by Spoon Graphics on how to create a vector heart illustration with simple shapes in Illustrator. The really sweet thing about this tutorial is I love henna designs and plan on creating a little side business doing henna at some point so this was fabulous training for me. Now I can start creating my own designs on transferable paper and they all will be uniquely designed by me! I learned so much about creating shapes and how easy yet time consuming it can be adding layer after layer of simple shapes to create a complex design.

As always my final illustration is below. If you would like to try this tutorial you can find it here: Vector Heart Illustration.

So I have this love for owls. And, the vintage owls are becoming a trend these days so I decided to create my own vintage owl and give a brief tutorial on how I created it. I created the eyes for my owl in Illustrator, but you could use any of these free hippy flowers: http://createsk8.com/2007/hippy-flowers/ as they would work great.

After you have your eyes picked out you’ll need to find a body type that you like. I found an owl image I liked and placed it in illustrator and traced the body with the pen tool, or you could use live trace if that works better for you. Once you have the body traced, open a few different pattern swatch libraries and experiment filling in the owls body. Place the eyes you selected in your illustration. You’ll need to use the pen tool to draw your own nose. They are adorable!

Final Illustration: