Dreamcatcher Creatures

Dreamcatcher

    A co-worker commissioned me to Illustrate her dreamcatcher concept, incorporating different creatures she came to appreciate while studying biology. She wanted something like the minimalist bird and seahorse illustrations I’ve done. I didn't know how challenging this would turn out, but we both liked the results.

    She requested certain creatures: an eagle ray, a spotted salamander, a crane, a caddisfly or dragonfly (my choice), a rainbow trout, and a fathead minnow. For the dangling items, she suggested snail shells, shark teeth, and pinecones. I added feathers also since dreamcatchers usually feature those.

Caddisfly

Crane

Eagle Ray

Fathead Minnow

    Pattern Swatch: I created the eagle ray's dots, dots on the feathers hanging from the bottom, and the fathead minnow's scales with Pattern Swatches. The art you create will tile infinitely inside the shape you assign it to.

The dot pattern: Create a white dot on a black square then follow steps 4-5.  Take note of item 3.1.
The X pattern: See the diagram below, which shows how to create a seamless tiling pattern.

1. Create a square with no fill or border that the X will fit into
2. Create long, thin rectangles with pointed ends, like a pencil sharpened on both ends
3. Rotate the rectangles 45 degrees. The points will go into the corners of the box
1. You’ll see a space where the corners or edges of the swatches don’t connect if you don’t get it right
4. Open the Swatches palette, and drag and drop the shapes onto an open space on the palette to create a new swatch
1. This action will create a little icon of your new swatch, which you'll see at the end of the other swatches in the Swatch palette
5. Create the shapes that will receive the pattern 
6. Select the shape and click on the dot swatch or the X swatch, which will apply the pattern to the selected shapes

    You can then move/rotate/reflect/scale/shear the pattern inside the shape, without affecting the actual shape, by selecting Transform Pattern Tiles in the General Preferences, or when you right-click > Transform > Move (or Rotate/Reflect/Scale/Shear) and select Patterns in the Object section.

The X Pattern

Rainbow Trout

    Art Brush: For the rainbow trout, I made the fins detail—the row of ovals—, with an Art Brush.

1. Create a black oval
2. Shift + Alt-drag to make a copy of the oval
3. Scale down the second oval
4. Select both ovals and use the Blend command, with "5" in the Specified Steps window, to make a row of seven ovals that go from big to small.

You can’t make a brush out of blended objects, so:

1. Use the Expand option to turn the blend into seven separate selectable ovals
2. Use the Group command to group the seven ovals together
3. In the Brushes palette, select New Brush, then Art Brush
4. In the Art Brush options, select which direction the brush should go in when you draw the line and select the Proportional option under Size.
5. The Brushes palette will display the new brush at the end of the other brushes

From there you can either use the actual Brush tool or the Pen tool. 

• Select the new art brush and make a line, or make a line and select the art brush
• The art should follow the path, which you can modify the line, but not the actual art

Spotted Salamander

    Scatter Brush: I used a Scatter Brush for the scales on the trout and white dots on the spotted salamander. 

1. I made a simple quarter-moon shape for the scales, and a plain white dot for the salamander markings
2. I selected New Brush and then chose Scatter Brush
1. With the Pen Tool or Brush Tool, draw a line and experiment with all the Scatter Brush options to find out what they do.
3. I drew a Scatter Brush line on either side of the creature
4. I made a copy of the creature's outline, placing it on top of the two Scatter Brush lines 
5. I selected the outline and the two Scatter Brush lines
6. then used the Mask command to "mask out" any of the Scatter Brush effects that fell outside the creature’s outline.
7. You can continue to adjust the Scatter Brush lines inside the mask, the Scatter Brush options, or the mask itself.

        For the dotted feathers hanging at the bottom, I lowered the opacity 50% to make them slightly see-through with the Transparency palette.

😃

    My artistic struggle lies in highlighting the character of the critter or object, as minimalist as I can, without just fitting together a bunch of soulless, stylized geometric shapes. After looking at some other artists work (so much incredible art on Pinterest), I think I could have gone simpler than I did, but these fit with the other similar works I’ve done.

    Also, I guess all the completed pieces check all the boxes for what I need, somewhere in my head, to consider something done; whatever aesthetic sense I’ve developed where I get the art to the point where I don’t feel the need to fiddle with it more, and can let it go.  No matter what I thought I wanted to do when I started a creature or object, I stressed and struggled and restarted and refined every aspect until I checked all those boxes.

    I don't know that I would consider anything here my style. I don’t know that I have a particular vector art style. If I put all my different pieces together perhaps I could find stylistic similarities.

    I do have rules I’ve used to create my various illustrations, utilizing repeating shapes, patterns, angles, and measurements. I study my reference to look for geometry I can use to simplify and stylize the creature.  I want to create a minimalist design using actual shapes, angles, or patterns I find on the creature. For example, in the crane’s head and beak, you’ll find lots of the same quarter-circles and half-circles, and lines and shapes with the same angles.  I might take randomly-spaced features and make them all equal, or use the same size line in different places to create visual echoes.

    I have one stylistic cheat: If a creature has a distinctive shape with a certain feature, like the crane’s bill, or the fathead minnow’s rear fin, where the shapes making up that feature seem unique and don’t appear anywhere else on the creature’s figure (if I can’t draw that feature with any of the repeating lines/shapes I use for the rest of the creature), then I’ll draw that feature with its unique shape. If I changed the distinctive shape of the crane’s bill or the minnow’s fin to fit with all the other shapes, then I would lose part of the creature’s unique character. I don’t want to get stuck on my rules and shoehorn shapes where they don’t belong. Using minimalistic geometric shapes, repeating lines and angles and what all, I’m creating a stylistic interpretation, but I’m still trying to maintain some kind of accurate representation.

🎨