As mentioned in last night’s post, I worked on a new illustration, this one was a combination of many sources. Sort of like sampling from different songs to make a new one I guess? The face is based on my previous illustration, for the body and clothes, I looked at some models at Old Navy’s website. The torso and legs are from two different models because the photo of the first model was cropped at her thighs so I found another full body photo from a different model and I think they matched up well.
I learned a couple new Illustrator techniques which will help not only with these illustrations, but in my professional work as well. The knife tool is handy for cutting shapes for shading and the blob brush is excellent for laying down solid color (actually creating shapes quickly using the stylus). A technique that I enjoyed was to use the pencil and smooth tools to create nice lines on one layer, then use the blob brush and eraser to create color fills on a layer below. It’s fast, clean, and can be very precise! And separating the stroke from the fill gives a lot more options for the stroke layer.
Lastly, I spent some time learning how to create custom fill patterns. The illustration above has a super-simple polka-dot pattern, which seems like it will be an important step to creating more interesting illustrations.
To see all the sketches I’ve been working on, you can check out the Flickr album “My Sketching Journey”, or my Instagram account barron.sketches which I created just for posting sketches, watercolors, and stationery items.
