So here’s the first post on my new illustration blog…finally. I figured that doing a little process post would be more interesting than a plain old “hello world” type post.

I also figured that doing it on an illustration I had already planned on doing for the site would kill two birds with one stone.

Even though I work in Adobe Illustrator for the most part I still always start with the ‘ol pencil and paper. I also frequently sketch with a ballpoint pen, but that’s another blog post. I almost always go through about 20 thumbnails before I get something I like. I tend to draw so small initially that you can really call them thumbnails. I’m not sure why I draw so small. It’s just something I’ve always done. I can even remember my parents and teachers asking me why I was drawing so small when I was growing up.

When I get something I like that’s when I feed it to may scanner. I usually scan stuff at about 150dpi…high enough to get the details and low enough not to bloat my files if I keep the sketch in them after I’m done in Illustrator. Even though the style I’m going for now has a thick-to-thin line quality I start with just regular 1px strokes. I use the pen tool to trace my lines. I know there are those out there who like the freedom of using a brush or using a digital brush and tablet, but I’m such a perfectionist that this just feels right for me.

I usually even trace complete parts that might end up being hidden later so that I can move them around freely and maybe even reuse them later in another illustration. See his left wing for example.

After I’ve traced it all out I will make another layer and use the shapes I’ve already made to make into color shapes. This is great for making images to screen print. (I will go into further depth on my process in future posts.) I just block in color using whatever color I happen to click just to get it in there. A lot of times I will use a lot of different colors just to define the individual parts before the final color.

The next step is making the brush strokes. The method I use involves making your own brushes and then applying them to strokes. That too will have to be another post. Illustrator does some weird stuff when applying brushes to strokes. If the corners are too sharp it will make a gross stubby joint and if the curves are too tight the stroke gets all squiggly and weird. The best way to deal with that is to just use the “cut” tool on joints so that the ends of your brushes fit together nicer.

After I’ve got all my brush strokes looking pretty good, I expand the strokes by “Expanding Appearance”. A weird thing that Illustrator does is put a “stroke” with no stroke and no color in the middle of all your new shapes. Very annoying but they can easily be selected and deleted by selecting all the same “Fill and Color”. Just make sure that your palette has no stroke or shape color. It will select them all and then you just press delete. When that’s done, I go to work adjusting the shapes and making them perfect. Last is color. I use Colour Lovers for color inspiration and start messing around. Lately I’ve been using a tablet and Flash to make the shadows, but for this little illo I just made the shapes in Illustrator with the pen tool.

So that’s it. That’s basically what I do. Sorry it’s not more in depth and I had to use the whole “but that’s for another time”, but I didn’t want this to be a book and I kind of need to save topics for more blog posts. I plan on doing a couple blog posts a week so keep checking back or follow my rss feed. Thanks, enjoy, and don’t be afraid to comment. Just please be respectful because I will delete rude comments.