1. | Aug 28, 2013

All the keystroke conoanitibms and short cuts make Illustrator seem absolutely foreign to artists used to traditional media... and most are not needed for the kind of work in your pic. It's more a question of approach.Rather than spending time drawing shapes with outlines and filling them in thus requiring you to repeat the time consuming task of accurately matching every nuance (easy with traditional media but not with Illy) a second or even third time, instead simply layer your work from the background to the foreground with overlapping shapes thus cutting your workload in half. This way an outline becomes a simple solid shape overlapped with another shape. An illustration like the one you've posted could easily have several hundred layers all containing a single simple shape. It's not like working with cells where you are constantly concerned with self-color lines and fitting everything into a half dozen layers to avoid color shifting nor is it like traditional illustration where painting on top of successive layers is messy and problematic. Illustrator doesn't care how many layers you jump. The color is always a perfect match. Couple this approach with a little mastery of opacity, masks, and knockout groups and you'll be set.If you must use a brush tool to provide an out line don't let yourself get too caught up looking for the kind of results you'd see with india ink or the like. Just make your stroke an then use the *convert strokes to outlines* command. You can then go back in and fine tune everything with the bezier handles - or whatever they're called.I rarely come to the SFV anymore so I hope this helps a little. Maybe this is old hat for you. North valley, huh... Are you in an Eichler?

2. | Aug 24, 2013

I think you knew how to arouse ieetrnst in me! I like the article so much that I think I didn?t even notice that I?m reading with an open mouth! Really very cognitive! So I?m writing here for everybody to enjoy it! Have fun!!!