Working on some new illustrations of love, joy and happiness for the new year, starting here with the line art, shading and color to follow.
Advertisements
ipad
Getting My Adobe Draw On
The past few days I’ve had some time to work on my drawings. I’ve included two of the illustrations I’ve done using the Adobe apps Draw and Capture on my iPad. The two illustrations are based on images I’ve collected over the years. I’ve written about the benefits of Draw before, this post is more about the uses of Capture.
For months I’ve had this app on my iPad and just never used it, but today I was looking thru emails and saw an upcoming Adobe Draw live stream event. To prepare for it I did a quick search for tips to help improve my technical skills, when I came across a tutorial on adding patterns to illustrations using Capture. It was a very straightforward technique so I incorporated it into two images that were close to completion but I felt were missing something.
A found picture of a friend of mine became the Cosmic Diva, my first image where I used texture in the background with the Capture app. Using the app, I took a quick pictures of my jeans and the tiles in my room to created some very basic patterns. To complement this image I used the jean pattern, adjusted the density and the colors to make the background more vibrant.
With Voodoo Lady I used an image of Erykah Badu as the muse for my cosmic sight-seer. For more of an interesting spin, I used the tile pattern to give her pants some pop and the jean pattern from the first image to make the background more vibrant and tie it into the Diva image.
Below are the original picture of my floor tile and the vector image after being processed thru the Capture app.
Stay tuned for more images but for now you can check out my earlier digital drawings in my portfolio here.
Share this:
W.I.P. or Demon Needs His Coffee
Another quick translation of a sketch that i wanted to work up in Illustrator but would have taken too long. Thank you Draw. Still working out the limitations of the app so if anyone at Adobe reads this, being able to label the layers would make organizing the vectors easier to track.
Share this:
W.I.P. or Still Working on Getting the Lines Right
It’s been a few weeks now and I’m still getting a feel for the digital aspect of creating something. Don’t get me wrong I’ve made a gang of vector drawings using Illustrator, but mostly with a mouse. I’ve used styluses before but the programs just didn’t feel as intuitive as a pencil and paper for me.
And then came Adobe Illustrator Draw.
As I’ve mentioned in my last post, I’ve been able to work at a pace that I haven’t felt in a long time. Draw helps me translate all the sketches I’ve wanted to create into a digital format in a very short amount of time and with ease. I’m still working on a learning curve but the best part of this app is that it is very much like drawing mixed with the best parts of vector art. I still need to find a stylus more suited to drawing as I want a level of precision only vector drawings give me. 
Which brings us to the subject of this post, this particular drawing has been reworked a few times in various mediums, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Red Devil Woman. RDW is a character I’ve been messing around with for years. The basic idea behind RDW is that she is a recurring force of destruction that pops up when history need a push to stay away from being too peaceful, the ultimate historical jump-start. RDW is always a woman who the force passes to, moving from country to country, woman to woman, always by transferring her horns and not everyone wants to have this power to cause chaos. RDW is the match, the fuse and the dynamite.
If you use this app and have any suggestions for a stylus please pass along.
Share this:
W.I.P. or An Adobe Draw Love Story
I am really digging Adobe Illustrator Draw, I mean really diggin’. I do have some issues with it, but overall I feel like I’ve been more artistically productive in the last few days messing around with this app, then I’ve been all year thus far.
The bad; the undo swipe needs a bit more work, the size of your current brush should match what is being shown to you, and Draw does have a shape function but a ruler couldn’t hurt. Also, if you’ve read my previous post then you know that I’m working with a stylus not optimal to this app and its capabilities.
And this leads to the great.
I am super surprised in the best possible way at the processing power of the iPad and this app. The bottom file contains four layers and the Archer drawing contains seven layers, including the original images I used as a guide. The brushes are very responsive and once you get a feel for them they are a true asset to the app. Don’t believe it, click on the image to zoom in and see the detail brush strokes gave me. Another cool feature is the shape tool which allows you to draw straight lines, again check the arrow and bow-string.
The transfer from the iPad to my laptop is also impressive, if not a little scary. In Draw you’re allowed to send your work from the app straight to Illustrator, layers and all, the scary part is seeing the program start on its own.
Bottom line, it’s not Illustrator, but Draw sure does come close for something I thought was going to be a nice toy. Again these are works in progress, but more to come.
And please any recommends on a stylus would be awesome.
Share this:
So I got an iPad.
Ok I didn’t get an iPad, I was scheming on how I could justify getting one when my Mom was upgrading her phone, got an iPad and gave it to me just cuz. Yeah, she’s cool like that. After the initial setup, wifi passwords, playing, etc., I needed to see what I could really do with my new baby, who I’ve named Mother Box 3 (comic heads will know) and that meant really looking into my Creative Cloud Suite.
About a year ago, I viewed the online presentation from Adobe introducing the new apps and features they came up with to fill the demand for iPad apps that function like Photoshop and Illustrator. I re-watched the presentation, synced up my account and went full on download. As much as I was having fun messing around, I needed to focus on a drawing, so I pulled up an old sketch I did with pencils and markers as a template and had at it using the Sketch app from Adobe. This is their lite version of Photoshop and is easy enough but some of the functions are not as intuitive as I would have liked. It’s a true learning curve for me. I still don’t like the final drawing but as I was obsessing about it ( I re-did her eyes 4x’s ) I realized the whole point is to just get familiar with the pad and stylus, which I must say is not very intuitive to some one who is more comfortable with having a sharp point. Another thing that bothers me is that there isn’t a lot of good info out there to help you when you want to understand the full breath of the app. The apps have very basic intro videos and not much help. As for the hardware, it is nice to be able to work on several different things on the fly, but working out in the sun is a pain. My next post will probably be about my search for the ultimate stylus (any suggestions) and how much I’ve progressed in my use of the apps.
