My artist/author copy of the Adobe Illustrator CC WOW! advanced vector art techniques book arrived. In addition to the one Gallery section I had from the last edition, I now have two more.
Thanks again to Sharon Steuer for the opportunity to be involved!
My recent article for CreativePro.com, Illustrator WOW! Techniques: Flexible Shading and Highlighting Effects, is now posted on their website. It expands on the coloring process using the Adobe Illustrator vector art Shapebuilder tool described in my Gallery page in the Illustrator WOW! CS6 book.
I just posted this screencast video on YouTube where I critique vector art created by a beginner Adobe Illustrator user. These critiques apply to any vector art software.
If you head over to the new Ustream page I set up, you can now access my live video drawing, sketching & vector sessions right from the blog! When there’s no live broadcast you’ll get access to the archive of recorded videos. Even cooler, the chat is also embedded.
Stay tuned as I plan to ramp up the live screencasts in the coming weeks.
I recently created an in-depth Adobe Illustrator tutorial for the Go Media graphic design and illustration blog GoMediaZine. The tutorial covers the creation of a cartoon character mascot from sketch to final vector art. The character art is a fun Twitter blue bird cartoon character, and the vector art files as well as icons for use on your own website or blog are available as a free download as part of the tutorial.
In this video, I am sharing with you a vector path creation technique to speed up the process of creating curved paths by adding intermediate anchor points after your corners have been created. I used to create my anchor points as I was following the curve of the shape I was tracing. Instead, with this technique the anchor points are added to your vector path after your corners have been created, allowing Illustrator to approximate the length of the curve handles for you with much greater accuracy the first time around.
It’s happened to all of us digital creatives. The dreaded day when you just cannot get one of your Adobe applications to launch. Usually there’s a deadline looming (of course). You’ve restarted your computer (three times) and still you cannot get Photoshop to launch. You’ve tried a few tips from some Google searches, but still nothing. Your geek cred is showing it’s limitations. And your deadline isn’t getting any further away.
What if I told you this could be avoided, virtually forever? And also, that you can get back to work with all your settings just the way you like them?
Another brief video in my series introducing some great new features in Photoshop CS4 for artists, cartoonists, illustrators and anyone else who sketches or draws using Photoshop.
This video features the excellent new keyoard shortcuts that allow you to drag-resize the size of the brushes using the mouse pointer.