Sunday, 13 January 2013

Purple Creative Streak


Digesting a beautiful Madhur Jaffrey fish dish with fenugreek and fennel I became intrigued by the patterns on the cover of her recipe book Curry Easy, wondering how I could achieve the same effect in Ai. Object>path>offset path draws a border around an object but I wanted to have different brush strokes on the outer edge and inner edge. It turned out to be easy; just a couple of snips with the scissor tool (under the eraser) cuts the line into two bits that can be manipulated separately. The flower is just a case of rotating and copying by 30 degrees around a central point.
The idea inspiring this design is that I often wonder (in July/August) how many purple hairstreak butterflies are above the oak canopy, flying in the sun as I walk underneath in the shade. I have only seen these wonderful creatures three times at eye level. And the little brown jobs? They are meant to be the caterpillar. The flower is based on part of the plumage of the under-wing.

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