Illustrator Tutorial: Contemporary Wallpaper Art

Create a grafitti contemporary wallpaper art with splashes and motifs. This quick illustrator tutorial will show you how to draw florals and create ink splatters effects. Combine them all to create a stunning contemporary master piece

1. Create a new document. You may use any rectangular size you want. I’ve chosen A4 landscape so that I can print it out.

2. Create a new layer & name it as “background”. Draw a rectangle around the entire document fill the rectangle with C:1 M:0 Y:11 K:6 (#ECECD9).

3. Next I created a floral shape. Follow the steps below to see how I did it.

5. After you are done with creating the shape, go to Object > Flatten Transparency and click Ok. Select the shape and apply a gradient from light to dark pink (Magenta: 55 and Magenta: 100). Duplicate it as shown below. Name  the Layers Floral 1 & 2.

6. If you have a high-resolution photoshop brush which is big in width, you can copy & paste it in Illustrator. Now trace the brush image, go to Object > Live Trace > Tracing Options select Detailed Illustration. Play around with threshold unless you get a satisfactory result, click Ok. Next fill it with C:0 M:63 Y:24 K:0 (#F37F93) and reduce the opacity to 20%.

7. We need to add a grunge splatter to the image. If you have a nice grunge vector you can use

that. Or, follow step 4 but this time use a splatter brush. Fill it with C:0 M:55 Y:15 K:0 (#F48FA6). Name the layer “Grunge Splatter”.

8. Go to Window >Symbols Libraries > Default Symbols > Print. Then drag “Rosette” symbol into the document. Scale it and place it as shown below. With the Rosette selected, go to Object > Flatten Transparency. Click Ok. Change the color to black and reduce the opacity to 40%.

9. Add a new layer. Create a big circle then apply a white to orange (C:0 M50 Y: 87 K:0) gradient set the opacity mode to screen. Now duplicate this circle to create a splatter like effect all over. You should have a white spatter effect.

10. Create some more similar splatter effect as shown in the image below. Fill the circled splatter with 100% yellow and set the opacity to soft light.

11. Now duplicate the layer “Grunge Splatter” and scale it by 80-90% and set the opacity to color burn. This would help in highlighting the cut-out image.

Go to Window > Symbols Libraries > Flowers now drag “Red Rose” symbol from the window to the document. Place it on left side, may be you would want to scale it a bit. Now with the symbol selected go the Object > Flatten Transparency and click Ok. Now with the object selected press D on your keyboard. Now go to stoke window and change the stoke to 0.5.

12. I found this beautiful photo on shutterstock which inspired me to create this wallpaper. Cut out the image in photoshop and place it in illustrator. Make sure you image is centered. Change the opacity to darken. Duplicate the layer & set the opacity to color dodge. Now your image should look something like that.

13. Create a shape as shown below.

14. Once done, fill the object with white background & give it a 1pt stoke. Duplicate the shape to match the below image. Place the object in a way that it covers the cut out image.

15. I downloaded a vector from http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/16/swirls-flowers-circles-a-free vector-graphics-set. I choose a nice curvy swirl from the vector and combined it with my earlier shape.

16. Finally, add a flower vector to the right of the girl to match with the rose vector on the left. Follow step 11. And, we’re done.

About The Author: Vinod

Vinod Batus (www.vinodbatus.com) is a professional web and graphic designer based in Mumbai (Bombay), India. He has worked in various mediums such as online, print & publishing. Very passionate & enthusiastic in his work and loves creating new artworks during spare time.

Read all articles writen by this author