Modifying the Butterfly
In Figure B, you can see the butterfly's wing separated into its various pieces. Since we just want to create a basic butterfly template, we don't need any of the decorative frills. You just need the basic wing shape, the veins and the body.

To get started, select the butterfly with the Selection tool and then choose Object > Ungroup. Repeat this three more times until the Ungroup option is disabled. Now, all components of the design are independent and you can separate them. Delete one wing entirely and just keep the basics of the other wing, as shown in Figure C. Since butterflies are symmetrical, you don't need two wings in your template. You can just make one and then duplicate it once you've finished with it.

Now, separate the body, veins and wing onto their own layers, as this will make them easier to select and work with, also shown in Figure C. You can use any method you want to accomplish this, but the venerable copy and paste method works well.

Note: To make drawing easier, you can lock lay-ers you're not using to keep everything in place. You can also select all the objects on a layer by option-clicking (Alt-clicking in Windows) on the layer.

Figure C: To make your work easier, separate the basic elements onto their own layers.

Wing Modifications
The basic wing shape is okay but not excellent, so we modified it. You can make similar adjustments to your butterfly as you desire. First, we used the Pen tool to remove all the points we didn't want, such as the bumps on the lower wing. We then used the Direct Selection tool to move things around a bit to make the wing larger in relation to the body, as shown in the comparison in Figure D.

Outlined Paths
The veins of the wing, though thin, aren't strokes. They're expanded paths. Because of this, you can go in and edit the points to vary the thickness of the line widths, which makes the graphic look more interesting. Outlining paths is also a good technique for technical reasons, as stroke widths can change when an EPS file is resized in a layout application such as InDesign or QuarkXPress. This is especially important to keep in mind if you're expecting the lines to act as a trap.

We want to use this same technique to create a border around the wing. By varying its thickness you can change the butterfly's appearance substantially.

To make the border, select the wing shape and apply a 1-pt. black stroke. Then choose Object > Path > Outline Stroke. Everything looks the same onscreen but the stroke is now a filled object. While it's selected, create a new layer and copy and paste it to its own location. Now all you have to do is update the body a bit. Just add a few points to give it a more "bug-like" shape. With that, you've wrapped up the template. Now, we'll show you how to modify it.

Figure D: Adjusting the wing's shape and thickening the veins improves the butterfly's overall appearance.