illustrating flourishes + patterns
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- colin_s
i spent most of my time growing up / in school in photoshop and know that in and out. i'm a pretty good freehand artist with a pen or pencil (never got used to a tablet). i know the basics of illustrator but have recently become fascinated with the idea of drawing flourishes / my own wallpaper patterns and whatnot.
problem is, illustrating is the one thing in illustrator i've never been good at. i don't mind putting in the time, but was wondering if those who are strong with the program had any tips. for some reason bezier curves always appear wonky, things come out uneven or just never look as good as they do when i draw them on paper.
suggestions? pointers? stories? thanks!
- VikingKingEleven0
Scan your drawings and trace them.
- right. which i've done. but again - it just never seems as good? plus, i'd like to be able to just sit down and do it once.colin_s
- monospaced0
I you have a wacom tablet you can use the pencil tool to trace. Double click it to set smoothness settings. It'll make good vectors that you can analyze and learn from. Honestly, just learn the pen tool
- Yeh, just learn where you need to put points, when to press ALT, where to drag. It'll become 2nd nature after not long.mikotondria3
- There are no short cuts though, and it's actually a really annoying thing to get the hang of, then all of a sudden..bop !mikotondria3
- monospaced0
If you really are a PS guru you should be a pro at it already. If you aren't then you're using PS wrong. Cheers.
- yeah i disagree.colin_s
- lol, mono... ... ridiculous comment - *applause :)PonyBoy
- ridiculous? Every time I use PS I am using the pen tool to create masks...nothing better, period.monospaced
- and colin_s, go ahead and disagree all you want, but I'm the one drawing circles around you with bezier curvesmonospaced
- +1... mono's rightShaneHolley
- fresnobob0
Your curves come out wonky because you suck at them. The only way to fix this is to practice a lot. just import whatever images you want and practice tracing them with the pen tool, youll eventually learn where to place points and how to drag the curves effectively. Don't be afraid to adjust curves afterward either.
Honestly though, youre still going to have to sketch, thats kind of a given... The thing about illustrator and the computer in general though is that you can do rough sketches and then clean them up and make them perfect in illustrator.
- marychain0
^ not entirely true
This is actually what my MFA thesis is about...
I'm writing a book tentatively called "Adobe Illustrator for Illustrators"
It features a lot of tutorials for the Tablet & stylus and generating non-typical vector work....focusing on line quality, color, texture and feel.
The Pen tool is not a natural tool for traditional artists
Don't worry....MOST people suck at Illustrator (even if they claim to know it) when trying to create something that doesn't LOOK like it was created in Illustrator
If you like I can send you some tutorials to try out as I finish them...you'd be a PERFECT test subject.
- pressplay0
mh, hard to explain it in english (I use the german version) but a simple trick would be to draw straight lines (just setting one point after another until you roughly got the form you wanted) and then apply the "round edges filter"
- colin_s0
thanks all. i'll just keep with the tracing illustrations done by hand and see how that goes.