French artist Xavier Collet explains how to make the painting process more efficient using the example of his work with a dark fairy surrounded by a forest.
I think the following drawing rules can help you develop your skills, but sometimes it can feel like they are trying to limit you. Trying to satisfy a wide range of artistic criteria such as character designs, thoughtful compositions, and effective color schemes can slow you down, but fast work isn't always good, so keep that in mind.
I believe that the best way to the top is to learn to feel, to do things instinctively. With practice, seeing things that are in the image and identifying those elements that still need to be worked on becomes second nature, fills the subconscious as you work.
With practice, it becomes second nature to see things that need improvement.
The only thing I did before I started drawing was to step away from everyone and the pictures in my head so that my subconscious mind would start generating ideas. After that, I completely immersed myself in the drawing process.
Initial sketches
I don't know how far I'm going to take this illustration. But I know that I want the main character to be a kind of queen - someone who will make you afraid, feel anxious, looking into her eyes.
So I'll start with a rough sketch to get an idea of what the composition will be. She walks in the forest and watches you. Well, let's start drawing someone who will make you feel real fear and bewitching horror.
Fifty Shades of Gray
It is important to take into account the depth of the image and determine the planes: a background with two or three levels of depth; your hero's main plane and foreground.
I start in mono - it's faster and it will be easier to change something. I chose a palette of many shades of gray and by adding horns and a full-length long dress to the character, I began to define her character.
A starting point
We all have our little weaknesses. Mine is that I can't resist drawing the character's face in the early stages. It's often said that detailing elements in isolation is not a good practice because you don't end up seeing the big picture.
Useful advice, I do not argue, but I can not stand the fact that there will be only a few details on the face, my hands itch terribly to complete them. So I took some time to draw the face, crown, horns and hair.
Sometimes it is very difficult to determine what colors an illustration will be in. So here's a little tip for you. Take an old drawing or even a photograph, it doesn't matter. Duplicate the image layer and apply the Gaussian Blur effect to the duplicate. Then change Blending Options - Blending Mode - Overlay. And see if this color scheme inspires you for your working illustration.
Finding a Color Theme
After that I adjusted the Hue/Saturation and paint with the brush already in color mode. Another tip is to apply Auto Levels or Auto Contrast and then play around with the layer's blend modes. Sometimes happy accidents will inspire you and help you overcome the wall of "uncreativity".
Add details
I start drawing the details of the character, starting with the head and bust, before moving on to designing the clothes.
I'm not making any ideas about the dress like I said, I'm just scrolling through a large selection of various images so that my creativity gets fresh juices and I can come up with an unusual design for the dress.
Contrast
It is good if there is contrast in the picture. More specifically: the opposition of shapes, brightness and color. My choice for this illustration is a bluish light, which will indicate magical power and control over all living beings in this drawing.
More details
Now that I'm satisfied with my choice of colors, I can complete the design of her costume by adding details such as jewelry, and depicting a range of materials such as fur, leather, metal, glitter, which all together make the design more interesting.
Plastic surgery is your friend
Remember the benefits of digital graphics software. The Photoshop Liquify filter is a powerful editing option. Here in my illustration I'm using it to touch up the face of the fairy since I decided it was too long.
Finish with her
Time to finish the last details of the character. I added the finishing touches to her corset, painted a skull on her staff, added a blue glow to her costume, and so on.
And now it's time to spice up the background with some rays of light and some noise. The speckled brushes set to Dodge Color are perfect for me.
We create pets
I want my dark fairy to have...pets. The lower part of the composition is a little loose, so it's the perfect place to draw the creatures that come to life with her dark magic.
I don't have a clear idea of what I'm going to do, so I sketch with a dark brush and then use the brush set to Color Dodge to add details such as the eyes and mouths from which the wisps of magic come out.
Monster menagerie
So far, I'm working instinctively and I'm quite happy with the design of my creature. Now I can add others. I use the same workflow: I create a small sketch and then add details using the brush set to Color Dodge.
blurry elements
I am almost done with this illustration and now I will apply some of the tricks I have learned over the years of my work. I want my fairy to look at the observer - the viewer who is hiding in the forest.
So I paint the branches with hard brush strokes. There is no need to draw them in detail. Then I added a Gaussian Blur effect to them and that's it - they're done!
Grain adds texture
I love adding texture to my drawings. Sometimes it's just a paper texture created with Layer Overlay. But now I'm going to do something completely different.
I added a neutral gray layer (Saturation - 0, Brightness - 50) and applied Filter>Noises>Add Noise twice (set to maximum) and Filter>Blur>Blur three times. Then I set this layer to Overlay (Overlay) and clicked on the Opacity of the layer, setting the settings to 5-6%
More magical life
I decided that the painting needed more life. My solution is to quickly paint the butterflies in the foreground, again to give the drawing more depth.
The last trick
Last tip. An easy way to add a little more variety to your art is to create a new layer and fill it in with a soft cloudy brush.
Set the foreground color to light gray and use a soft cloudy brush to create contrast. Then put this layer in Overlay Mode.
I followed my own advice and finished the drawing!
I still receive letters with the same constancy: “I want to become an illustrator, where do I start?”, “How can I learn to draw?”, “What if I can’t draw, do I have a chance to become an illustrator?”
At first glance, the questions are rather strange. You don’t know how to draw, you don’t want to start and try, you don’t even want to learn how to draw - which illustrator are you? Why do you need it? But everything is not as simple as it seems at first glance.
Recently, I came across on the net a higher private school in Hamburg, which trains only illustrators in a narrowly focused way. On the very first pages of "About Me" they report that an illustrator is a designer who can draw.
I felt funny because I am a graphic designer and received, without false modesty, a good education. Over the years of training, we were relentlessly told that any designer should be able to draw, handle a camera, understand typography and understand art.
Along with such subjects as typography, we were taught drawing and photography - things that were reflected in my ideas about illustration. I devoted several sections to the influence of photography on illustration in my book "Profession - illustrator. Learning to think creatively" at once.
The saying that an illustrator is a designer who can draw seemed very strange to me. At first, I decided that people simply do not know what modern designers are taught. But then I think I understood what they were about. Namely, that an illustrator is a professional who owns a wide variety of skills and image techniques, which can often already be called rather design ones.
Indeed, the modern illustrator is no longer tied to traditional visual techniques: he does not have to work only with paints or pencils on paper. He doesn't even have to be very good at drawing. It is enough to be able to handle paper and scissors, wood and chisel, fabrics and a sewing machine, to be able to draw only at the level of contours and sketches, and at the same time be no less successful and marketable illustrator than colleagues working in traditional techniques.
Today I would like to draw your attention to the techniques of modern illustrations.
To questions like "Where should a future illustrator start?" I already answered, and below you can follow the link to my answer. And to the question whether someone will become an illustrator if he has not learned to draw traditionally, academically, I will affirmatively say yes. Because if paper and chiaroscuro are not given, you should try yourself in some kind of unconventional technique, if in spite of everything you want to do illustration professionally.
For inspiration, I will show you a beautiful book - a collection of works by illustrators and artists working in non-traditional illustrative techniques.
Book on American Amazon:
German Amazon book: Illustration Play: Craving for the Extraordinary
The cover is made on very beautiful, textured paper with real stickers. 
And this is what the content looks like - a list of presented illustrators. 
Illustrations made with a burner. Author: Genevieve Dionne 
Illustrations-installations from various materials. Author: Stephanie Dotson 
Illustrations-installations made of paper and wood. Author: Aj Fosik 
Illustrations on old packages, envelopes and more. Written by Melvin Galapon 
Microstocker and illustrator Olga Zakharova shared several ways she uses to create another illustration for sale or for a commercial order. The methods are simple and, for sure, most practicing illustrators know about them, however, they all involve nuances that are worth paying attention to.
When I first started this blog, I didn’t understand stocks at all and knew very little about creating vector illustration. Therefore, I wanted to share every important discovery with the world - I understood that just as I suffered recently, not knowing how to make a seamless texture, now someone else is suffering :)
Now it has become more difficult. Because the “newbie” stage has already passed, and so many things seem so obvious to me that until one of the newcomers starts asking questions about them, it doesn’t occur to me to write about them. Therefore, guys, feel free to write comments, ask all questions, even those that seem stupid (there are no stupid questions).
Three pictures - three different ways to create. Guess which one is where? :)
This is all to the fact that I was once asked here recently - how is it more convenient to outline a picture in Illustrator?
After all, there are a great many ways to turn an idea or a sketch into a vector image using our favorite program :) And I decided to describe the most famous methods - with their pluses and minuses. I myself use different methods - depending on the result that I want to get.
Trace / Image Trace
The most automated way to make a vector image out of a sketch and, as it seemed to me before, the fastest (disclaimer - now I don’t think so anymore).
The image trace is carried out using the image trace panel (upper Window panel - Image Tace) - just place your sketch on the workspace, open the panel, select one of the presets in the drop-down menu (everyone has different settings, you can choose the best one by typing) - for example, sketch - and in a minute or two your file is turned into a vector. Then you just need to remember to remove the “garbage” - various empty paths that are formed in the process. To do this, without deselecting the traced object, go to the top menu Object - Path - Clean Up.
Trace is ready! As they used to say at one of my last jobs, “press the button and go to the cashier”. But, alas, everything is not so simple.
The result of the trace looks cool only when the original sketch image was of high quality (clear lines with a minimum of shaking, no hairy lines, etc.), then it was scanned with decent DPI and at least slightly processed in Photoshop (whitening the background, adding contrast) . In all other cases, the trace needs to be improved.
I do this: turn on the visibility of the paths (cmd + H), choose a contrasting color for them in relation to the stroke (double click on the layer name) - and, having enlarged the image to 200-300%, I check the accuracy of the lines. A regular pencil helps me a lot in this - I like it more than a smooth one - and a plug-in from Astute Graphics Smart Remove Brush Tool, which can remove extra points, minimally changing the line.
It is important here not to overdo it in “licking” the picture - if you need perfect straight lines, it’s faster to use one of the tools that will be discussed below. It is reasonable to use trace when you want to keep the effect of “drawn by hand”.
I currently only use trace for quotes like this:
Pros and cons of trace:
You can relatively quickly turn a good sketch into a vector image while maintaining the hand-drawn effect
- Takes time to process
- The whole object is already vector, that is, it is more difficult to change the thickness of the lines
- The lines will not be perfectly even (this is also a plus)
My verdict is that you need to use trace wisely, applying it not to everything in a row to save time for processing, but to selected pictures in order to preserve the “manual” effect and some carelessness of the lines.
Blob brush / Blob Brush
Of all the illustrator tools, the blob brush looks the most like a real, live brush. For this, he is very much loved by artists who switch from live drawing or drawing in Photoshop to vector. The beauty of this tool can only be appreciated by those who have a graphics tablet - with its help you can control the thickness of the lines by pressing.
This tool has so many fans that it’s even embarrassing for me to admit that I don’t like it and practically don’t use it at all. It evokes in people about the same emotions as when I say that I don't like The Master and Margarita. But what is - what is :) Examples of the use of a blob brush in my portfolio can only be found on very, very old pictures, which, most likely, will be removed during the next cleaning.
One of my first blob brush drawings
You can draw lines with a blob brush just like you do it with a felt-tip pen on paper (comparing with a brush, it seems to me, is not entirely true, because the transparency of the blob brush is not regulated by pressure), provided, I repeat, that you have a tablet.
Pros and cons of a blob brush:
Makes it easier for artists to transition from raster to vector
+ Simulates "live" drawing
– You need a tablet to appreciate all the charm (and the ability to draw also does not hurt)
– The thickness of the lines can only be set before drawing, as soon as the line is drawn - it is essentially a vector object with a fill - as in the case of a trace, it is difficult to adjust the thickness after the fact
Pentul / Pentool
Probably the most incomprehensible tool for beginners, which turns out to be an extremely convenient and functional thing when you get to know it better. Very soon I will add a lesson to the store on how to make Bezier curves my best friends, because I myself spent a lot of nerves on them in my time.
The pen is the tool most distant from artists and close to graphic designers, because in order to draw a line, you don’t need to draw it with a brush / pencil, etc., but put a dot, then another one - and so on, adjusting the bend and length with the curve handles.
For some reason, it seems to me that girls paint with a blob brush, and boys paint with a pentula, because it is so strict and serious. And yes, it's my favorite instrument. True, not a standard pentule, but an upgrade from Astute Graphics called Vector Scribe.
Pentula pros and cons:
Clean and neat lines
+ You can adjust the thickness of the drawn lines/pictures at any time in a couple of seconds until the expansion is done (which needs to be done before sending it to stocks, but it's better to save a non-expanded copy in the working file)
+ Pentula is a great way to create stock images for those who can't draw in the classical sense of the word
– All drawing comes down to arranging dots and turning knobs - this annoys many creative people
– It is also useful to master the Shape Builder Tool and the Pathfinder panel, because a regular eraser will not help to remove the excess
– To learn how to confidently handle a pentula, you need to master a certain amount of theory and a lot, a lot of practice, while at first the lines will turn out to be crooked and it will take a lot of time to draw
Brush (regular) / Brush
A compromise between a pentula and a blob brush for those who want to draw lines rather than dots and still have more control over how the line looks.
Either on a line drawn with a brush, or on a “pentula” one can “plant” a huge number of different brushes - from the standard library (although officially they cannot be used on stocks), or !! their own, each time getting a new result. Then you need to remember to expand the whole thing (that is, turn it into a vector using the Object - Expand command).
Pros and cons of a brush:
The ability to edit lines remains and you can draw with your hands (not with points)
- Need a tablet
- Lines almost always turn out not the way you want - maybe my hands are crooked, but according to my feelings, the same blob brush allows you to more accurately control the line
The blob brush and brush have their own individual settings, which can be accessed by double-clicking on a specific tool in the left pane.
For a brush, you can adjust the sensitivity and smoothness of the line, for a blob brush, you can also enable or disable automatic sticking of objects of the same color to each other. I have nothing to tell in detail about the settings, because I have standard ones.
simple geometric shapes
We are talking about a square, a circle, lines, polygons - most often, of course, they are used not by themselves, but in combination with a pentula. Drawing with the help of geometric shapes is suitable for those who like geometric shapes in pictures, who enjoy clear shapes and a minimum of points on the paths :) Previously, I used shapes only for some obvious actions - for example, I made the eyes of a character using a circle, or a frame of a house with using a square.
After watching the Illustration for Designers: Create Your Own Geometric Animal course on Skillshare, I rethought the role of shapes in pictures and became interested in learning to see shapes in objects. Thus was born a series of animals, which I plan to continue soon:
Pros and cons of drawing with shapes:
The lines are perfect, no need to think about where to put a point and how to pull the handle
– It is very difficult for most people to adjust to “thinking in forms”
- You still have to use additional tools - pentula, passfinder panel or shape builder tool
Approximately 80% of my current pictures are drawn by the InkScribe plugin - the same analogue of Astute Graphics' pentula that I already talked about (by the way, I plan to write a separate post about Astut's plugins as soon as the potential size of this post stops scaring me).
The other 20% is trace, simple shapes and sometimes the Dynamic Sketch Tool. This is something like a pencil, only more accurate and with a lot of settings (again, Astutov's).
What tool will be more convenient / faster to draw for you personally, no one can decide except you. Therefore, my main advice is to try them all, apply them to different images, different styles, in different situations, and don't let someone else's opinion influence you. Because for some, blob brush is the most beautiful and sweetest of all, but for some, to draw cool pictures, a tablet is not needed - they can do it with a mouse and a pentula.
Over the past few weeks I've been trying to use grayscale filters, I was interested in the result and what they can do. Also, much to my surprise, I discovered the Width Tool in Illustrator CS5. With these two tools, I decided to put them to good use and create an illustration in the style of Roy Lichtenstein.
There are quite a few tutorials on how to create a similar image, but I decided to go through this one myself. I was not interested in other lessons, because. my occupation was only entertainment. Therefore, if I suddenly copied someone's technique, then I really did not know. In addition, it would be quite nice to place on this site a lesson on creating illustrations in a similar style.
Roy Lichtenstein (October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop art artist. The success of the artist brought his work on the themes of comics and magazine graphics. Wikipedia
Step 1
Let's start by working in Illustrator.Open the photo in illustrator you will be working with. I found this one on Shutterstock, but you can choose any other.
Step 2
Select the Pencil Tool (N) and start drawing over the photo, using it as a background. I started with the eyes. For pupils I used Ellipse (L).
Step 3
Continue drawing with the Pencil Tool (N) and the Pen Tool (P) to get more precise, but don't get carried away because perfection is not required here.
Step 4
Use the Pencil Tool (N) to outline the girl's hair:
Step 5
Then, with the same tools, add some details for the hair:
Step 6
As a result, we got vector elements for creating a girl. You can add more elements as you wish, depending on the photo you are using.
Step 7
Remove the background photo to only work with vector elements:
Step 8
One of my favorite tools in Illustrator is the Width Tool (Shift+W). It allows you to change the stroke width of part of our stroke. Look, it's just fantastic!
Step 9
Using the same tool, change the width of some strokes like this:
Step 10
It's time to add some color. I used beige for the skin, yellow for the hair, white for the eyes and black for the details. Let the blouse be green:
Step 11
Now let's go to Photoshop. Open the paper texture in Photoshop. I found the texture in the same place as the girl, on Shutterstock.
Step 12
On top of the paper texture, create a layer and overlay the photo of the girl with the Blending Options Multiply. In this case, it will be useful to us for importing a vector from Illustrator and for creating halftones.
Step 13
Trim off excess parts of the photo that protrude beyond the edges of the paper texture. The best way to do this is to use a layer mask:
Step 14
Create a new layer below the girl photo layer, but inside the same folder with our mask. Change the new layer's blend mode to Multiply and fill it with blue:
Step 15
Copy the vector image in illustrator and paste it into Photoshop. When pasting, I used the "Smart Objects" option, because this allows you to edit the vector at any time right in Photoshop.As you may have noticed, I've set the new layer's opacity to 70%, which allows you to set the desired layer position:
Step 16
Once you find the desired location, make the layer opaque (100%):
Step 17
Change the order of the layers so that the photo of the girl is on top of the vector layer. After that, desaturate the photo (Image > Adjustments > Desaturate). You will end up with a black and white photo, just like mine.Then go to editing levels (Image > Adjustments > Levels).
Change the black channel to 60 and the white channel to 195.
Set our layer blending mode to Multiply:
Step 18
Choose Filter > Pixelate > Color Halftone. In the window that opens, specify a maximum radius of 15 and a value of 199 for all channels.Note: Depending on the size of the illustration, change the maximum radius proportionally.
Step 19
As a result, we get this image. The illustration is almost ready, it remains to give it an old, shabby look. We also need to clean our teeth and eyes from halftones:
Step 20
Place the paper texture on top of all layers of our illustration and set the blending mode to Linear Burn:
Conclusion
The illustration is ready. Teeth and eyes have already been cleaned from halftones here.In the same way, you can use halftones to create illustrations in the style of Roy Lichtenstein, as in our experiment.
Thank you for your attention.
This thread is a translation
For this you need a special site: https://steam.design/ . We are looking for any background that the van likes on the trading platform, and click to show it in full size. The browser shows the background in full size and copy the link. Next, paste into this field, which is shown on the screenshot and click Change BGThen we press the button, which is marked in the screenshot.
Then we download this background and place it on the desktop for example. There will be 2 files Midle and Right Top and we will need them. You can set an avatar as you wish. Download ZIP Button
Browser
To make a long illustration, we go into an absolutely browser and go to Steam, where we log in. We go to the illustration through the profile.Next, click to load an illustration, not from the game, select the Midle picture that you have on your desktop, call it whatever you want, but it's better to mark it as a dot. Please check the box below. And don't click download yet.
Click anywhere with the right mouse button: View Code. And we see such a picture.
Click on the Console button which is highlighted in the frame.
And enter the following code there document.getElementsByName("image_width").value = 999999;document.getElementsByName("image_height").value = 1; press Enter and that's it.
We press upload and our image turned out as an elongated one. We repeat the same steps with the Rigth Top. If you've done all that, then move on.
Last step. Loading.
We go to the steam application. Click in the profile, Edit profile "". Then scroll down and look for showcases. IMPORTANT! if the level is above 20, then the showcase of illustrations should be in place 1.Next, we load the image in the showcase, only the image itself will not be visible, click at random, if it is wide, then it hit correctly. Midle to the middle. RightTop is loaded to the right and the very first cell. Click save changes, go to your profile and rejoice.
