PicMonkey Tutorial: Love Birds Art

Valentine's Love Birds Created with PicMonkey Photo Editor

It was time for a new PicMonkey tutorial, and Valentine's Day seemed like a good reason to make one! This is my fifth full-length tutorial on how to use PicMonkey to create different artistic projects, but this one is a bit different. 

I went with a bit more "moody" colors. V-Day is in winter, so I wanted to show how cheery a little love could be when it's cold and gray outside. 

So, are you ready? Let's make some art! 

*this post may contain affiliate links. When you buy or sign up through my links, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure here.*

Valentine's Art Tutorial

Step 1. 

Open up the PicMonkey home page and scroll over "Design" in the top bar. When the canvas prompt above drops down, choose 8x10. 

It will open up a blank canvas in the editor, and prompt you to choose a color. Just hit apply so it will stay white. 

Step 2. 

Scroll down to the butterfly icon on the left. Click that to open the PicMonkey overlay section. (Fun stuff!) 

Open the section marked "geometrics, and select the oval. 

Step 3. 

The oval is a stretchy oval. You can pull it and stretch it by grapping the corners of that box around it. 

For this, you want to stretch it very wide, and make it somewhat chubby. Then drag it to the bottom of the canvas so that it looks like a hill. 

Step 4.

Once your "hill" is in place, click on the overlay palette (shown to the right) and change the color from black to dark gray. I used the fourth darkest gray on the table. 

​Click the white part of the canvas to release the overlay and save the color. 

Step 5. 

Look back to the left at your overlay table. Scroll waaaaay down until you come across "Birds". 

Click on the pretty birdies, and choose the second one. Doesn't he look funny floating way up there? It's okay. We'll get him grounded. 

Step 6. 

Drag your birdie down to the hill, and resize him to look similar to the image above. You will want him positioned to the right as shown. (It's important later.) 

Step 7. 

Once the bird is in position, click the paint box and change the second color to pink.

​In the top row of paint colors, I used the bottom right pink shade, which is a sort of bright magenta. You can choose whichever shade you prefer. 

Step 8.

Back to the overlay table! Scroll up until you find the "Doodly Hearts". ( I just love saying that.)

You can see the one I'm using highlighted in blue on the image above. 

Step 9. 

Position your heart, and change the color to the same pink you used for the bird. Don't worry too much with positioning though. We will be tweaking that in the next step. 

Step 10. 

Head back to overlays and look for the section marked "Dashed and Lined". When you open it you will see a neat squiggly line at the bottom. Click that squiggle...it's going to be a balloon string. 

Step 11. 

Now you can work with both the string and the heart balloon to position them perfectly. The string can simply drape across the bird's beak. 

In the next step, we will hide where the balloon and string meet. 

Step 12. 

Scroll back up the overlay table (is your scroller tired yet?) and find the section marked "Arrows." 

You can see which one I chose. Change it to the same color as the balloon using these steps: 
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• Mouse over the "overlay" palette. (the box hovering to the right).
• Click the black strip beside the color chart. This gives you a dropper tool. 
• Move the dropper tool over the balloon until the color selection turns the same shade of pink. 
• Click to save the color. 

Step 13. 

Resize and position the arrow like the photo to create the balloon neck.

Step 14. 

Before we can do the next step, you have to merge the layers together. See the bar under the canvas with all the symbols. Choose the one on the far left. 

When you click it, it will open a layer box showing you all the overlays so far. Click the arrow at the bottom to combine everything. 

Now we are finally going to leave the overlay section and go to textures. Those are behind the symbol that looks sort of like a hashtag (or woven cloth). 

Scroll down until you find "Edifice" When it opens, choose the third one on the top row, and make sure: 
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• The blend mode is set to "multiply" 
• The saturation slider is at zero
• The fade is set to 45%

Once you've done that, hit "apply" to save. 

Step 15. 

Looking at the far left icons again, head to the top and choose the magic wand. These are the effects. 

Are you in there? 

Okay, scroll down and down and down until you get to "Mirror". 

Don't panic! It's going to look weird when you first open it! Choose the second option like the one highlighted in blue above. 

Now drag the offset slider until your birds are just touching at the beak. My offset is set to 3266, but yours may be different since there is no way to size the overlays exactly. Just slide it carefully until your birds look similar to mine. 

Step 16. 

Almost done! Head to the icon showing the letter "T". That's the text overlay. 

You use whichever font you like. I chose "Stampete" because I liked the grungy look with this piece. I sized it to 528, and faded it to 25% so that it blended with the background. 

Really, you can use any font, color, blend, fade, message, etc. you want here. Or leave it without text if you prefer. 

Once you are done, simply click on the canvas somewhere to save the text (after it is positioned). 

You are done! Look at the top bar where it says save. Click that and follow the prompts to save your finished Valentine's Day Love Bird art! 

Special Note

You will need the paid PicMonkey membership (Royale)  to do all of the steps shown here, (the membership is only around $33 for a year, and gives you fast, ad-free access to a ton of features.)

BUT...you can use the free trial version to make this (which gives you chance to explore!) 

Without the Royale membership or free trial, you can still follow this tutorial to step 14, and have a single love bird. (You may have to choose alternate text or overlay options than the ones mentioned.) Don't be afraid to explore different overlays, fonts and textures. There are tons, and they are all really cool!
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