- Design your own ecards and send to your family and friends. This is a 3 part lesson. Lesson 1 will get you familiarized with some of the basic drawing tools. Lesson 2 deals with typography and color tools. When you are all ready, we will introduce you to the pen tool on our final lesson.
After you have completed all 3 lessons, your final ecard will look something like the one below.
In this final lesson, we are going to use the pen tool extensively to complete our ecard. We will take a in-depth look at the pen tool and how to use it to create more complex paths. Lets begin.
Open my_ecard.psd file. Before we start drawing, take a few minutes to study the pen tool chart below.
The pen tool cheat sheet helps you to get familiarise with some basic drawing techniques and various pen symbols.
Please note that the commands for the above cheat sheet is meant for Mac users. For Windows users, replaced "COMMAND" with "Ctrl" key and "OPTION" with "Alt" key.
Now that we have a better understanding on how the pen tool works, lets move on to draw the rest of the elements on the ecard.
Create a new layer call "neck". Using the pen tool, click on a position slightly below the mouth to create the first anchor point.
Next click and drag to create the first curve line as shown below.
Create a third anchor point and drag out the handles to form a curve.
Click without dragging to create the fourth anchor point.
Notice that the third curve line is slightly off. Using the technique described in our previous lesson, we click on the handles of the third anchor point to manipulate the curve. Press "Alt" and drag one of the handles to adjust the curve.
To finish off the path, we click on the first anchor point to close it.
Open the paths palette "Windows>Paths" and click on the "Fill path with foreground color" icon. Delete the path and "Ctrl+Click" on the neck layer to bring out the selection. Using the gradient tool fill the neck from top to bottom with a foreground and background color of #E07C63 and #FEBEAE respectively.
Drag the neck layer below the face layer. Save your file.
Next up, we will fill in the shirt. We are going to go a little faster here but don't worry if you make any major mistake you can always revert "File>Revert" to your last saved file.
Create a new layer "shirt" and construct the anchor points as shown below. Don't forget to drag the handles and manipulate the curve if necessary.
Complete the path by clicking on the first anchor point to close it. Fill the shirt with green color. If you forgot how to fill the path with color, here it is. Open the paths palette "Windows>Paths" and click on the "Fill path with foreground color" icon. Delete the path.
"Ctrl+Click" on the shirt layer to bring out the selection. Using the gradient tool fill from top to bottom a foreground color and background color of #B7D682 and #6F8F37 respectively.
Without deselecting, switch to the elliptical marquee tool and select "Intersect with selection" on the option bar. Create a new layer "collar" and fill it with white.
Press "Ctrl+d" to deselect the selection. Change to the pen tool and create the following anchor points. Fill it with white on the same collar layer.
Repeat this on the right sleeve. Fill it with white on the collar layer. Merge the collar and shirt layer together. Merge the neck and face layer together. Save your file.
Create a new layer "right arm". Likewise use the pen tool to create the following anchor points.
Close the path and fill it with #FFB395. Delete the path.
"Ctrl+Click" on the right arm layer. Fill it with gradient of #E27155 and #FFBFB0 from left to right.
Select the elliptical marquee tool, make sure you have the "New selection" icon selected on the option bar. Draw an ellipse that intersect the arm. Create a new layer "arm line". Choose "Edit>Stroke..." to open the Stroke dialog box. Keep the default setting and click "Ok" to draw an outline around the ellipse. Make sure you have #E27155 chosen as foreground color.
Switch to the "Eraser" 
tool. The eraser tool changes the pixels to transparent. Clean
up and remove the unwanted areas so that the armline stop somewhere in the middle.
Merge arm line layer and right arm layer together. Name it "right arm". Drag the right arm layer below the shirt and face layer as shown below.
If you observe carefully, the left arm is almost indentical to the right arm when you flip the right arm. We are going to do just that, duplicate the right arm layer. Select "Layer> Duplicate Layer..." and call the new layer "left arm". Flip the left arm with "Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal" and move it into place.
Notice the left arm is awkwardly positioned, lets fix that. The left arm should rotate slightly in an anti-clockwise direction. Choose "Edit>Transform>Rotate" or press "Ctrl+t" to rotate the left arm and move it into position. When you are satisfy with the result, press "Enter" to confirm. Save your file.
Well done! We have covered some of the basic techniques for creating your own ecard. You can stop here, but we will go on to show you how you can further enhance your ecard with a little imagination.
We think the background for this ecard is a little bare. Lets jazz it up! How nice it would be if we can just lay on the grass and watch the world go by. Our little boy would appreciate that as well. Open a file "File>Open...", here we choose a grass background.
Drag the grass background layer to your my_ecard.psd file and position it above the canvas layer.
Merge the face, right arm and left arm layers together. For the final touch, we add a drop shadow layer style to the boy to give it a more realistic look. Use the drop shadow settings as shown below.
The final artwork together with its layers as shown below.
Congratulation! You have completed all our lessons. You are now officially our Little eCards designer. Using the skills you have learnt, go out and make more ecards. Feel free to send us your design. If we love your work, we might just feature it on our website.
Click here to download the pen tool cheat sheet used in this example
Click here to download the grass background used in this example
