Free Printable: April Showers

Download full size here

I actually drew this up at the beginning of March when we had a ton of rainy weather.  I was thinking of the old adage "April showers bring May flowers" and this design just popped into my head.  It's one of the few times that the thing I envision in my head becomes a reality in execution.  I'm not the best at drawing.  I enjoy drawing but what I see in my head is rarely what comes out of the tip of my pencil.  It's something I struggle with quite a lot but I'm SO HAPPY that it came out perfectly this time.  

This is also the first time I've drawn something on paper and then colored it on the computer.  The basic process was this: I drew the design in dark pencil, took a picture of it and uploaded that to my computer.  I then upped the contrast and brightness in Photoshop to try to get a clean image.  Then I selected all the dark areas and erased the rest.  This gave me a basic outline of the drawing.  I then used my Bamboo tablet to trace my lines and add the raindrops.  The last step was to go back and "paint" in all the color.  It actually took less time than I thought it would.  Tracing with the tablet is MUCH easier than trying to draw from scratch.  I have a feeling I'll be using this technique more often.

I hope you like my drawing!  Feel free to download the full size to print!  If you do download it, I added a white border (which you obviously can't see right now) to size it to 8x10 proportions.