Recently I began attending a weekly figure drawing sessions. I always thought that the best way in the world to getting better as an artist, no matter what medium or genre you’re into, is to do live figure drawing. The models so far have been fantistic dressing up in costumes and utilizing various props.
I stumbled upon a post over at Penciljack.com by Caanan, a wonderfully talented artist. He was messing around, with some fabulous results, in Adobe Illustrator. I’ve heard and read some things over the years about being able to ink comics and do some wonderful vector illustration with the program and while I use it daily, I don’t use it to draw with. I’ve tried but just couldn’t get the program to respond like I wanted. In his post, Caanan directed me to comic artist Brian Denham’s site, www.illocraft.com, who is an expert on the subject.
After some time reading up on the subject I now have just an little bit of understanding on how to draw and ink in illustrator. Here’s my 1st effort after about an hour reading the site and playing in Illustrator.
Simple, I know but it’s a start and I can really see how inking this way can be very addictive. I was also surprised to find our much (potential) control and freedom I had. While I’m in no danger of throwing out my nibs and microns it’s nice to be able to try and keep up with the always ongoing digital revolution.
