Commissioned Stylized Caricatures

"The Bad-Joke Guys"

    A friend commissioned me to illustrate his idea of him and his two buddies, all in Christian ministry coming from different walks of life.

    I should have made this a vector illustration in Illustrator instead of a bitmap illustration in Photoshop with a Wacom.  Fixing mistakes or making changes took forever.  I used the Brush tool for most of the project.  I used the default black foreground and white background; I drew with the black, then pressed x to 'erase' with white.

    I used the Pen Tool to create the patches on the vest:

1. In the Brush Tool options, I set the Brush Master Diameter to two points
2. I used the Pen Tool to draw a path in the shape of the patch on the vest.
3. I right-clicked over the path to bring up the Stroke Path option
4. Clicking the Stroke Path option brings up the Stroke Path / Tool: option dropdown menu
5. From the dropdown menu, I selected Brush, and a 2 point brush line stroked the path

    I made the chains on the front of the vest in Illustrator with the Art Brush tool.  I imported the chains into Photoshop as Smart Objects, so I could resize them without losing resolution.  I made the background in Illustrator also.

    My friend liked the finished product.  He surprised his buddies with copies for each of them, and they liked it also.

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.

😃

Bluejay, Charlie Harper, Exploring the Ruins

      I'm happy to feature my latest Adobe Illustrator CS2 illustration, inspired by master illustrator Charley Harper.  I found his book, "An Illustrated Life" by Todd Oldham, at a local Half-Price Book Store.  A several-page interview, then chock full of minimalistic, basic shape happiness. :)

"Charley Harper, an Illustrated Life" by Todd Oldham

Bluejay

     I started with a photograph I'd taken with my trusty Canon Rebel XTi.  The challenge came from wanting to stay true to the original photo, preserving shapes, colors, and details, while rendering everything in basic shapes.

Bluejay, Canon Rebel xTI

     The bold, simplistic shapes and coloring of the bluejay's head/face lent themselves to rendering in straight lines and simple curves.
     The colorful pattern on the bluejay's back went through a few iterations before I finally achieved the simplified, balanced symmetry.

At one point, still trying to simplify

     A vertical centerline runs from the left edge of the tail and through the middle of the body.  I centered the pattern--evenly-spaced triangles and arches--on the vertical centerline.
     All the up-and-down lines comprising the tail taper to the centerline at the top middle of the arch of the pattern.
     The tree limbs consist of repeating arches and "V"s.  The blue triangles and rectangle represent the sky.

     I kept the colors to a somewhat limited palette.