My latest Illustrator drawings

Hello -

Just because I haven't posted anything on here, as of late, doesn't mean that I haven't been busy drawing. I've recently entered a competition for an online game that I play - the theme was to create Halloween items. Here are the items that I drew and submitted. I've generally used a reference photo to get the perspective and shading correct but all drawings are my original creations all drawn in Illustrator.

Heart in a Jar



- I tried to animate this one in Flash, but it didn't look to great - will need to start getting into Flash, too.

Brain in a Jar



Iron Frame Gothic Bed



Strand of Garlic



Coffin Bookcase



Gothic Picture Frame

Easy Vase with Illustrator

I've been disappointed with myself for not making time for this blog and posting more tutorials - real life gets in the way too often.

I sat down in front of the computer searching for an easy Illustrator tutorial (video tutorials and way more time consuming) just to create a new post and I found this very easy one. I learned a new tool (by new I mean I it's new to me, not to the program) called the 3D Revolve. This tutorial took less than five minutes which means I have enough time for some house chores before I go to work.

This 3D Vase Tutorial takes less than five minutes and is presumably aimed at beginners.

Tied up...

In between working full time and installing a heap of new software on my computer - the PC has been a bit tied up as well as myself.
After my last software installation and a free day, I plan on coming back with new tutorials. This is embarrassing and I can't believe three weeks have already passed since my last tutorial.
Be back soon...ish.

My first avatar!

I've always wanted to make my own avatar. I started on it two days ago for a bit and then literally 12 hours on and off yesterday. You can go mad trying to perfect every detail and it also depends on how simplified or complicated and realistic looking you would like to make it. I decided to settle for somewhere in the middle.

I'm also proud to say that I used absolutely no tutorial to guide me on this one. I simply used all of the new tools and tips I have learned from previous tutorials and combined them all together. I also got to experiment with the gradient mesh tool, which I hadn't used prior to my avatar creation.

Here is a picture of the work in progress (the final is at the end).



I began with the picture (shown above) and made it the bottom most layer and knocked down the opacity to about 30%. Every other layer I broke up into different parts of the face. The Illustrator layers aren't as "in your face" as Photoshop layers, so I have overlooked these in previous projects. This time I was diligent and organized.

Secondly, I started with all of the basic shapes and predominant lines (wrinkles) of the face. I initially started using black stroke and a generic skin tone and as the piece started coming together I began playing with the colors.

The eyes were the trickiest bit for me especially the lashes! I have redone my eyes since the "in progress" to the "final picture" see if you can spot the differences. The first set of lashes looked nice, but when I put them on my avatar I looked like a drag queen. My lashes are naturally short and thin, so I used the pencil tool to draw a straight line and used the handles to curve them a bit. I copied and pasted and changed the angle over and over - and rescaled and then finally made them all into one group.

The hair was the easiest part. I started by making some isosceles triangles with the polygon tool. The largest one was the main color of my hair and the smaller one is for highlights and the stroke of the largest triangle is for some natural red tones in my hair.



Next I used the warp tool to create my naturally wavy hair. Definitely play around the with the warp tool settings.



You can either copy the triangle of hair and resize different ones and place them then use the warp tool or just use the warp tool on one and then copy and place those. It's a more natural look to do them individually but you also have less control.



....and voila! My first avatar!

Day of the Dead Skull Adobe Illustrator Tutorial

So, I was looking for some more Illustrator tutorials (I know, I should be posting video tutorials) and I came across this El Dia de los Muertos inspired looking skull from the blog Spoon Graphics and thought it was really cool.



Everything was going pretty well until I get to the "create clipping mask step." I won't tell you how many hours I spent trying to work it out, re-reading and re-re-reading the step to see if I've missed something. I tried using the pathfinder to attempt the same step using another method and I just couldn't get it. It's easy in Photoshop, so I really don't know why I struggled with it so much. So, I've aborted this tutorial until someone can explain to me what I am missing. Here is the step:



Here is my unhappy looking unfinished sugar skull. :o(



Maybe this is a lesson that I should stick to what I know and that's video.

If you do want to try this yourself the tutorial link is here.

Paint an Apple with Adobe Illustrator CS5

As I've mentioned previously, I'm still new to Illustrator which is probably why the majority of tutorials are for Illustrator. I am a video editor by trade, so I should probably be focusing more on video, motion graphics and animation but I'm just having too much fun with Illustrator right now.

I've dabbled a bit with Illustrator CS4 so I can't make comparisons but apparently the bristle brush used in this tutorial is new to CS5. (I'm so glad I've upgraded from my single Adobe product to the Production Premium Suite).

This tutorial Create a Painterly Apple with Illustrator CS5’s new Bristle Brush comes from Vector tuts +. I was reading a bit about this website and they will pay you for your tutorial submissions. You can find tutorial submission information here.

I really enjoyed this tutorial, too, and I'm very pleased with the way my apple turned out. I probably should have added some shading to the bottom of the apple but it's time for bed so I'll do that later.

Tutorial Picture:



My design:



I pasted the photograph of the apple that I used as my model as well as my color swatches.

Half Orange Tutorial for Adobe Illustrator

I really need to focus more and kick procrastination in the rear. It's been over a week since I have posted and completed a tutorial.

This orange looks so nice and juice I'm craving some orange juice or lemonade. This tutorial is from Vector Tuts Plus.



I did run into a few problems in step 8 with creating the pattern. The bounding box always seems to be a bit distinct. I re-sized all of my dots to 1/4 the size - copied it a few more times to make a new 'pattern' and it looked much better, in my opinion.

Have fun with this one. I think I'm going to try some lemons and limes using this tutorial, too.

My version:

Great news!

My photo, from the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk, has been selected to represent Geelong, Australia. My photo is going to be one of 1,111 other photos to be judged for the grand prize and the people's choice award. I'm going to post a link on here when voting opens. I was so thrilled! Oh, and I got a pay raise today. It's been a good day.

Bomb Tutorial with Adobe Illustrator

Okay, I just got back from "Slackerville" and I'm back. Here is a bomb tutorial that I've been casually working on the past couple of nights when I should have been getting some shut eye. It's from a website called V for Vectors and has all kinds of fun Illustrator tutorials.

This is a bomb tutorial intended for beginners with an estimated completion time of 30 minutes. It took me twice as long and I still couldn't figure out how to color the stroke with a gradient without having a fill. Ugh!



Here is my version:

Kuler

I just came across this website called Kuler - it's a place to download color pallets for Adobe Illustrator. It's great if you're having a creative block - or just undecided about what color scheme to use. Here is some more information about Kuler on the Adobe website.

Worldwide Photowalk in Geelong, VIC, Australia

Hello -
Been a busy week with real life commitments. Yesterday I took a trip to Geelong, with my partner, for Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photo Walk - I posted about it previously.

It was a really nice. I feel guilty, I actually haven't been out shooting anything for a few months so it felt great to get out and shoot again. I understand real life gets in the way, but I really need to prioritize.

Here are some of my shots.

Create a Glass Bowl in Adobe Illustrator Tutorial

I'm quite a novice when it comes to Illustrator and Flash, but I do have a heap of books on the two programs and I'm determined to learn. I'll start slowly. This is a basic tutorial from Illustrator on how to create a glass bowl from Layers Magazine, of course!

See the entire tutorial here.



My version - I'm determined to make some flowers for the glass bowl, but that may be a bit too ambitious right before bed time. Perhaps I'll post an updated version later.



... 1 hour 15 minutes later. Okay, okay. I know myself and I would have been obsessing about this in my sleep. I decided to make my own version of a fish bowl. I made the fish on a separate art board and dragged them over. This is one of my first Illustrator projects. I'm actually quite proud of myself.



Here is my glass bowl/vase with flowers.

Antique Photo Effect Tutorial

I've been in love with Photoshop since I first used it in high school in the late 90s. It's just such an amazing piece of software that I don't even need to describe it - it sells itself.

Here is a nifty tutorial I found. It's how to create a vintage looking photograph, frame it, give a glass effect and 'hang' it on the wall.

This antique photo effect tutorial is from Planet Photoshop.



Here is my version. The picture is a photo of my actress friend Sam Durrani. We attended Boston University together. I didn't take the original photograph - just borrowed it for the tutorial. The wallpaper was found at the website Vintage Sheer Elegance. WARNING - I tried to use the homepage of Vintage Sheer Elegance, but it looks like an "adult-friendly" website. That's what happens when you search using Google images.

I'm back

I'm back from my one week hiatus. I had out of town guests and had a 3-day Final Cut Pro course this past weekend. I'm back online and will post a new tutorial tomorrow.

Photo Restoration Tutorial

Here is a photo restoration tutorial by Sam Scholes on Vimeo.



Here is a photo I restored recently - okay it was before I watched this particular tutorial - so I'll have to find another old photo and try his technique.

Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photo Walk July 24th

I'm surprised I have never heard of this before. I am very familiar with Scott Kelby and own half a dozen of his books for Photoshop and Lightroom. Rather than try to explain who he is I'll just copy a short bio from Wikipedia. Here is the link for the Worldwide Photo Walk.

He is editor and publisher of Photoshop User and Layers magazine, president and co-founder of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and is president of Kelby Media Group.

Kelby is a photographer, designer, and the award-winning author of more than 40 books, including Photoshop Down & Dirty Tricks, The Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers, The Photoshop Channels Book, Photoshop Classic Effects, The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers, The iPod Book, The Digital Photography Book, and The iPhone Book.

He is the training director for the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour and conference technical chair for the Photoshop World Conference & Expo. He is featured in a series of Photoshop training DVDs and has been training Photoshop users since 1993.

In the fall of 2007, he created Kelbytraining.com to bring much of his training material into one easy-to-find location.

In 2008 he started the "Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk". In 2009 this consisted of communal photowalks in 900 cities.

So, I just found out about this but the Melbourne location is booked solid and there is a waiting list. They do have 41 spots left in Geelong (over an hour from here) so I'm thinking I might join there. Besides, I haven't been to Geelong yet and I hear it's beautiful, too.

If you're interested in signing up for the Worldwide Photo Walk - just check out the link and find the city nearest you.

Other Blogs

Ok - so I'm guilty of using Facebook. I actually like to keep my page semi-professional and have used to join various groups including Adobe (multiple products), AVID, Digital Juice and Video Copilot to name a few. You can get some real gems from these pages in their news feeds. One that popped up literally five minutes ago was from Adobe Creative Suite:

Adobe Creative Suite Do you have favorite websites or go-to blogs around web design, photography, video production, graphic design, etc? Let us know what they are and share them here with your Creative Suite Facebook community.

There have already been a heap of replies


Logo Lounge - has an interesting post on the latest trends in logo design.

Creattica - contains lots of graphic design work for many different products.

Grain Edit is focused on classic design work from the 1950s-1970s and contemporary designers that draw inspiration from that time period.

Behance Network - a place for graphic artists to post some of their work and there is also a job search.

Graphic Mania - has loads of tutorials as well as links to freebie downloads.

Photoshop Tutorial: A Picture Worth a Thousand Words

I love love love tutorials, too. This one is from Layers Magazine - the how to magazine for everything Adobe.

Tutorial: A Picture Worth a Thousand Words



My versions- they're both of my cat Houdini

Freebies!!

I'm a big sucker for plugins, brushes and actions. It's even better when it's freeware. I have tons of bookmarks all of the place, so I'm going to be posting some links to freebies that I have downloaded.

Brusheezy - not sure how useful these brushes will be but definitely very cool stuff.

Designm.ag - some basic but handy Photoshop actions. It's also an art and design blog - so heaps of helpful info and freebies on here.
They've also got some cool fire brushes - I downloaded these, too, but again haven't used them yet. I'm hoping this blog is going to change things and get me motivated again.

Stay tuned.......there will be plenty more freebies in future posts.

New Purchase

Ok - so I'm already a little bit in debt ($3,500) but Digital Juice is having an awesome sale on their new Motion Designer's Toolkits volumes 4 & 5. They're normally $499 but it was a promo for the first 1,000 - Buy one for $249 and get the second FREE! I couldn't pass up this deal.

To be honest - I already own volumes 1 & 3 and haven't even used them yet! I have browsed through all of the files and they look amazing - but I just haven't had any work that I could use them on yet - and I haven't been inspired to create anything with them (hence the blog).

If you are a video editor or motion graphics designer - and you have never heard of Digital Juice MDTs or do not own any - I highly suggest you invest into a couple of these. Just check out the promo video and see for yourself.

National Gallery of Victoria

This past weekend I went to the National Gallery of Victoria to see an exhibit European Masters: Städel Museum, 19th-20th Century.

The pieces were from all different schools of painting including the Barbizon School, Les Fauves, Impressionism and Les Nabis to name a few.

I jotted down the names of the paintings that impressed me the most, but I can't find high resolution photos of the majority of them. I'll post the two that I could find.



Village Road in Winter (1870) Gustave Courbet


The Jealous Lioness Paul Meyerheim

This painting was one of my favorites. I bought a print to frame and hang up in the house.

Purpose

I'm a procrastinator - this blog is intended to make my creative side accountable to something. I have hundreds of unorganized bookmarks, thoughts, ideas, photos, projects and inspiring words and images all floating around on my computer or in my head. Hopefully, this blog will be the place for all of that to come together and I can make better sense of it all.

This is intended for all fine art, photography, digital art, filming, editing and motion graphics.