Seems quite late in the process to address this, but after getting carried away with Procreate I thought it might be nice to talk about my experience with Adobe Illustrator thus far.
I have some previous experience using Adobe Illustrator, which came as a part of the Adobe suite my school provides to students. For anyone with access to programs like Adobe through their school accounts, definitely take advantage of it because after school personal subscriptions run quite high and you will miss the luxury of having free access, or better said, “included” access. All that tuition money has to go somewhere.
Either way I’ve been working with the 2020 update for Adobe Illustrator on a 13-inch MacBook Pro. I don’t have a mouse so I have just made the most of using the trackpad. Certainly not my favorite part trying to fiddle with the trackpad to make it do what you want in Illustrator but over the past few years I’ve become accustomed to using the program this way.
For the first two designs I made, I relied on the pen tool to outline the different elements of the picture. Just as I would in Procreate, I used the pen tool to create closed shapes and filled them with colors I pulled from the original picture.
Something I realized in the design process is I tend to prefer Illustrator when trying to create certain details in the images. I have mostly noticed this preference with the sweatshirt lettering in the pictures I have used. The second design of my cousin and me, her Delaware sweatshirt was my first attempt at that kind of detail and it was much easier to recreate in Illustrator with the pen tool as opposed to free hand drawing in Procreate. This is quite obvious in the fact that I did not even come close to recreating the sweatshirt lettering in the Procreate design, but even as I’ve learned I can use both programs for that kind of detail in the third portrait I’m working on, I still prefer Illustrator for this. The pen tool just makes this process much quicker and cleaner.
Here are the Procreate (right) and Adobe Illustrator (left) designs again for reference.
Speaking of the pen tool, I have been using it very wrong. Since Adobe Illustrator was not as new and exciting as Procreate, I was not as motivated to do extensive outside research about using the program aside from the original tutorial I mentioned in the first blog that I relinked here and referring back to skills I have learned in different classes. That being said, when the opportunity arose to attend an optional class tutorial about Illustrator this semester, I was more than happy to attend. I definitely could use more guidance and conveniently the main subject of the tutorial was the pen tool.
This was where I learned I was doing it all wrong. With the pen tool, the less points the better. And I have very much been going point crazy trying to accurately outline the components of the picture. I now know by holding down on the points you place, you can create curves and bends that better shape what you are tracing. Since I am still getting the hang of using the pen tool properly, I still use a good number of points but return to the shape after to delete all the unnecessary ones. I think there is a better way to go about this but I normally just select the object and using the curvature tool to click and delete the ones I don’t need and manipulate the ones I do need.
With this new knowledge of the pen tool I have tried to implement this tracing approach to my third and final design. It is a taking a little longer this time around because of it, but in the end I think it will pay off.
Overall, Adobe Illustrator has surprised me with these portraits. I did not expect to like using this program as much as I have so far. Illustrator is at a disadvantage to Procreate since Procreate is generally more suited for this kind of work, but I have to say Adobe Illustrator has kept things interesting. My preference has gone back and forth a few times and I am excited to see what my final verdict is once I finish all these portraits.
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