I was commissioned by my sister to draw a large Leprechaun for a St. Patrick’s Day party she was throwing. I sketched a few versions out and then drew the final 3 ft tall leprechaun. Afterwards I liked the look of my final so I did this vector head. I opted to use the pencil tool in AI to do the shadows and details. It’s my way of being more spontaneous.
I had this idea almost a year ago. It seemed like a good time to rev up illustrator and “flesh” out the concept. The crispness of vector art is attractive to me, probably because my sketches tend to be very rough. I usually use the pen tool exclusively when I do this type of illustration. However, if I’m able to accept the looseness of the pencil tool, it can really speed up the process and add a spontaneity not inherent in the pen tool. I really like J. Otto Siebold’s work because in addition to being extremely complex (his Alice in Wonderland pop-up book is mind boggling), but he balances clarity, precision, and spontaneity.
Wanting time to sketch birds and time to sketch digitally I decided to combine my tasks and divide my efforts. This image was sketched from a reference photo in Illustrator using pencil tool and basic brushes for the bird and watercolor brushes for the background.
I went sketching at nearly graveyard. Some headstones have great architectural moulding. One grave had metal cross with a bit of celtic knotwork which I sketched and recreated in Illustrator as an exercise.
I set up a grid and found the repeated unit in the design. I then drew that unit as a single stroke, applied several strokes to the appearance. When I copied and rotated the repeating element, I had to clip the lines at specific places to create the “over-under” characteristic of celtic knots.
Leaving the artwork as single, editable stroke with applied appearances makes editing and correcting the design incredibly easy. By creating graphic styles, I was able to try several “looks” to the design in a matter of seconds.
Nod to Leslie Cabarga’s Logo, Font & Lettering Bible
I felt like tooling around in Illustrator. I sketched with the pencil tool with the stroke color well set to a light blue (since apparently CS3 and CS4 regressed from being able to apply transparency effects on the go to the pencil and pen tools). I then used the a calligraphy brush to “ink” the pencils.
I double-clicked the brush icon to adjust the tool preferences and left the “edit selected strokes” option checked. This can be greatly irirating to use since when starting a new stroke near a selected stroke, the selected stroke may disappear. The keyboard shortcut command+shift=+A deselects all artwork in the document so when drawing with the “edit selected strokes” pref checked, keep your non-drawing hand on the keyboard.
After the basic inking, I created a custom artbrush (football shaped) and applied it to the strokes, adjusting the weight of some.
I imported the whole shebang into Photoshop and added some color and texture.
My wife wrote a series of short stories for a Christmas present. I whipped out a few illustrations in CS4 to include with them. Here are three excerpts which I quickly colored in Photoshop. Merry Christmas!
Sketched in pencil, vector inkedin Illustrator, colored and textured in Photoshop.
I thought it would be fun to attempt to corner various members of my family and sketch them using my wacom tablet and Illustrator. Mmmm, digital media. As much as I really want Illustrator to work out as a tool, the workflow is not always conducive to an organic approach. This is one more attempt to be playful and work with speed.
I put together a little PDF portfolio last night. In a misconceived first attempt, my layout of work samples was on a charcoal background. Pretty boring. A friend kick started my creative process and I began brainstorming and sketching some possible concepts for the piece. I ended up going for a “traveling medicine show” look. I really like ephemera and woodtype.
I created 9 pages completely in Illustrator reusing and repositioning elements. Since I might eventually print this as a promotional, I wanted flexibility so I could alter the dimensions if necessary.
I also was able to experiment with the appearances palette.With the exception of the 2 rivets and the type, the metal nameplate is a single, styled object. With the settings stored as a graphic style I can instantly give a similar appearance to any shape I create.
If you’re an Illustrator fan but haven’t utilized the Appearance panel, give it a shot. It’s invaluable as a timesaver if you need different objects to have a similar appearance, and when applied to text the styles are dynamic, meaning that you can edit your text and retain the style. It also makes keeping track of objects easier. Instead of having a shape for the object, one of the drop shadow, one for the metal highlights, etc, you can have one object that can be changed in the appearance panel.
Above is a sample of one of the interior pages. I changed the parchment orientation, position, and size on each page, and had a different bottle and label as well. Sample work was added in InDesign.
There are a total of I started at around 6pm and finished at 2am. Good Times.
I decided to add some atmospheric lighting to create more focus on the bluebird’s reaction to his rotund associate. I also changed the direction of the backmost texture layer and increased the opacity and number of texture objects. The horizontal direction was too distracting to the composition which is strongly vertical.
