New Slang Shading
My latest creation, here you go. This one was totally spontaneous… I started messing around with Illustrator while the web was slow this morning, and soon found myself on quite the lucrative trail. Over a few hours, bit by bit, I chipped away at this. Here is the result. Took me 2 hours at a very casual and relaxed pae.
Thoughts: In my last two posts, I described a yearning to pull away from the style direction in which I’d been heading in regard to shading. For a good chunk of my first several illustrations, I found a groove with a shading style that involved three shades of black and one shade of white around all objects. This looked good, in my opinion, but it ate up too much time and began to consume me in the direction of insatiable detail. I seemed to want more and more and more. And I recently realized it had to stop — I was getting too far off the path.
In my previous post I put up some inspiration pieces — illustrations which looked absolutely great and used a much more subtle approach to shading. These had been on my mind, and I found myself yearning to experiment. It is noteworthy (at least in regard to my track record) that this illustration was put together without any pre-game sketch… I simply started with the hand, moved up the arm, and banged it all out in Illustrator.
What I Learned: This illustration taught me how much fun a different approach to shading can make. I also utilized Bezier Curves — which are in stark contrast to the “jagged corner” approach I’d utilized in most all of my previous posts. It was fun to mess around on the other side of the fence (the smooth curve side), as it makes me appreciate the curves as well as the jagged lines I still hold dear. I also learned that I have a lot of work to do with faces. This is one area where a pre-sketch (on paper, scanned in digitally) would have helped me tremendously.
What’s Next: In the spirit of this illustration, I want to continue on down the path of simplicity. I’m sure there is more ground to explore along those lines, and quite the amount of treasure to retrieve. If for nothing else than an exercise, I’d like to experiment with creating characters in a style very close to the cartoon-Zelda theme. It would be good practice, even if its not the ultimate look I’m going for. But I do appreciate the simplicity a great deal.
Not exactly sure what my next illustration will be. Today an awesome idea came to me for a landscape (of sorts), one that I’ll probably work on today or tomorrow. I have the sketch all planned out, so implementation wouldn’t be tough. This piece in question is the perfect “next project” to test out this new shading style on a non-character.