Floral Garden in Illustrator
Start with a new document,
I'm using a square of 1000px to base the illustration. Using the Pencil tool
draw a rough outline, paying particular attention to the curve across the artboard to give a smooth flow.
Drag a green radial gradient across
the shape to represent the first grassy hill.
With the Pencil tool draw a similar
shape, send the shape to the back of the stack by pressing CTRL / CMD + [
Draw a third hill shape with varying
contours and place at the back again.
Give more depth to the image by
dropping the transparency on the rear two hills, giving the impression that
they head off into the distance.
Draw a 1000x1000px square aligned
with the artboard and fill with a sky blue to white
vertical gradient.
Create some nice stylized clouds with
the circle tool, holding Shift to give an equal shape draw multiple versions
and place accordingly.
Select each group of circles and
combine them into one single shape with the Add to Shape Area option from the
Pathfinder tool, click Expand to refresh the outline of the new shape.
Position the clouds as desired in the
sky and drop the opacity slightly.
Draw a circle on the artboard and go to Filter > Distort > Pucker &
Bloat. Move the slider while previewing the effect to generate some petal style
shapes for our flowers.
Copy and Paste in Place (CTRL / CMD +
F) the petal shape and rotate by 45 degrees (hold Shift) to give eight equally
spaced petals.
Add a circle to the center and
position the flower with in the first hill in the foreground.
Copy and Paste multiple versions of
the flower, scale and rotate each one slightly and position where appropriate.
Give each one a slightly different colour scheme.
Continue pasting flower heads right
across the foreground, getting smaller as they head down the hill.
Draw up a cute little butterfly by
starting with a group of circles, by pasting and scaling an instance of the
circle and changing the colour a simple pattern can
be created as a wing.
Rotate the wing, duplicate then go to
Object > Transform > Reflect to generate a mirror image.
With a slightly smaller circle,
create the lower wing.
Reflect and position this smaller
wing on the opposite side. Then draw a long thin oval as the body of the
butterfly and position it centrally.
Group all of the shapes that make up
the butterfly (CTRL / CMD + G) then position the butterfly within the scene.
With the pencil tool draw a smooth
curve representing the flight path of the butterfly, add a dashed white stroke
as a creative touch.
Finalise
the image by trimming down any excess shapes, select all the objects by
pressing CTRL / CMD + A and group them together then
draw a temporary shape over the desired area.
With both the temporary shape and the
main group selected, use the Crop option from the Pathfinder tool to trim down
the objects into a neat square.