4/25/2006 - Two posts of me in a row!? Frickin' pretentious!
For whatever reason, I've been receiving quite a few inquiries on how I create drawings in Adobe Illustrator with my Wacom.
I've always claimed there was no real secret to it - as soon as I got my Tablet, I opened up Illustrator and just started drawing. I've worked with Illustrator for years so there was no awkwardness. It was like drawing on paper.
Still, there's something a little too 'slick' about drawing in Illustrator. Sometimes it works and sometimes the end result doesn't quite feel right to me.
Here's a very general tutorial on how I might go about creating a simple illustration. I found a picture of this ugly dude on MySpace to use as a reference.
With the photo placed, I go to my Brushes window, select New Brush, and create a new Calligraphic Brush.
In the following window I've chosen a 2pt brush with 2pt variation. This means that the maximum diameter of my brush (pressing hard on the Tablet) will be 2 pts wide, and (by varying my pressure on the tablet) my line will fluctuate within the entire 2 pt diameter. Feel free to play with these settings. Take them to extremes and see how they change.
Then I bring up the Brush Tool preferences by double clicking the Brush Tool. I'll be honest - I don't change these very much. They will affect how 'faithful' the brush is to your movements. But I find Illustrator's default settings are pretty decent for me. Again - play with them and figure out what they do for you.
Now I'm ready to start mangling virtual paper! By utilizing the pressure sensitivity of the Tablet I can create a wide array of thins and thicks with that one brush. . .
. . .but often I will create a 1pt brush for small details, and a 3 or 4pt brush for big areas. On to the mangling!
Here I did a quick sketch using the photo for reference. (As opposed to using a ham sandwich for reference)
Then I change that quick sketch to a light color, usually blue. Something non-distracting. Sometimes I'll use Magenta and Cyan for different areas.
I select all of my artwork, go to Object, Lock, and Selection. This locks everything in place so I can draw on top of it without accidentally selecting something.
Now. . .well, now I start drawing. Sometimes I remain faithful, sometimes I come up with a better idea. As far as how I go about laying down the lines - you'll have to figure that out yourself. There are people out there MUCH better at inking than I am. Seek them out and study them. All I can say is I find it easier (digitally and traditionally) to go from thin to thick, light pressure to heavy pressure.
When I'm done, I go to Object, Unlock All. This unlocks my quick sketch so I can delete it, leaving only my finished drawing.
One of the nice things about drawing these lines in Illustrator is you can select them and apply different colors to them incredibly easily. You will find though that you need to send some lines forward or backward to accomodate the colors.
Here's the drawing with some basic colors applied.
That's it for Illustrator. That easy! Here're a couple finishing touches. Open the Illustrator document in Photoshop (you can right-click the file and select "Open With Photoshop")
The illustration will open on it's own layer with no color behind it. Create a layer behind it and start coloring! In this case, I'm still using my Tablet and Photoshop's Paintbrush Tool Kind of like an old animation cell. You know, back when the word "cell" actually stood for something.
And that's it.
Like I said, very basic. People who use Illustrator will find a lot of this boring. People who don't use Illustrator will hopefully find some of this helpful. Let me know if I missed anything!
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Post A Comment!
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4/26/2006 - Untitled Comment |
| Posted by themightyadam |
| Thanks so much for putting that together, Corbett! I've had Illustrator for a while but could never get it to do what I wanted. You make it look easy, though, so I'm gonna go home and try it. |
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4/26/2006 - Untitled Comment |
| Posted by Neneuche |
HOt Dang!
Make one of me too!!
I also use the same settings in illustrator. Wierd....
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4/26/2006 - Untitled Comment |
| Posted by corkbutt |
MightyAdam - It IS easy! Try it. :)
Nooch! I was thinking about posting this tutorial on the Board itself. Send me a pic and I'll do one of you instead of my ugly mug! |
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5/1/2006 - Untitled Comment |
| Posted by Neneuche |
| I postede pictures of me on my blog so you can use them. :) |
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6/8/2006 - Untitled Comment |
| Posted by sgtcheez |
thats cool..
its been a long time since i have drawn anything that looks totally different than what i normally do..
and i just did.. useing your technique..
i dont like it.. but i imagine that comes with time!
ha! thanks for the tutorial! |
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About Me
Doodles, Sketches, and general goofing about.
All images are ©copyright Corbett Vanoni unless otherwise stated. Do not steal from me or I'll break your knees. Twice.
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