An update. Nearly at the point that I'm losing interest which is when I know to stop. :)

Bongo

Still playing with Illustrator and finding new ways to work more tightly than I should. Lots to do before this is finished including working out how to save in RGB without the colours going nuts.

~Glenn

Updated again

Update

A quick update

Inkscape vs Illustrator

I have been a longtime user of Inkscape and thought I'd set myself a challenge to make a decently detailed vector art piece. It wasn't long before speed became a real issue. Blurs really take their toll on poor old Inkscape so I thought I'd install a 30 day trial of Illustrator and see how my drawing progressed and what I could learn from it.

Firstly the illustration saved as an SVG translated well with the exception of blurs which Illustrator would rather complain about than convert to its own Gaussian blur. I set all of the blurs in Inkscape to 0 and re exported and I was off.

Illustrator is remarkably fast in comparison and I learned a lot, but I do find the basic pen tools in Inkscape easier. I got some of the way to a friendly environment in illustrator by fiddling with the defaults but still, Inkscape is just more accessible. Anyhow. I have a long way to go but here is where I got to tonight.

Work so far. Still lots to do and I'm not happy with the boy or the dog or the bunny.

but I do like my pig.

and she turned out alright.

Leaving Sapa and Sapa Market

I found a bunch of new brushes for Photoshop and thought I'd try blocking out a picture or two. These are only 10 to 15 minutes worth of play, taken from photographs I took on a recent trip to Vietnam but the brushes proved to be great fun.

Leaving Sapa.

Sapa market.

Inkscape alien

I really love using Inkscape. I think it gets a little slower than Illustrator but you have to love the pricepoint. I am a huge Open source fan (in case you didn't already know) and Inkscape is really one program I lean on again and again.

Inkscape to photoshop

I was wondering if starting in Inkscape before Photoshop might be a quick way to block out colour and pattern before bothering with shading. Not sure but I will test it out some more. I;m also getting annoyed with colourspace in Photoshop. The images I am posting are far more saturated than I'd like.

Pig. Testing painting with light.

I have been playing around with a technique that I have seen a bit recently where shading is achieved by painting layers of light and ambient occlusion.

Sam Nielson has a great tutorial here:

http://theartcenter.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/sam-nielson-painting-process.html

http://theartcenter.blogspot.com.au/2010/03/sam-nielson-painting-process-part-2.html