Clearsite Multimedia

MAKING FOLK ART FROM ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR?

In the midst of a diversity campaign, I was shooting some art at a Mexican restaurant chalk full of chotchkies (that’s Spanish for “chotchkies”), aluminum stampings, painted ceramic sea animal sculptures and window-box. ‘Love this kind of art because you don’t have to figure out what it is. You just enjoy it. I’ve always liked folk art—unschooled, simple and naive. But that doesn’t take the technique, charm and artistry away.

Octo was every bit as fascinating to me as a Van Gogh or a Matisse where the textures, patterns and paint strokes just don’t seem to be in proportion to the rest of the piece, and yet, it’s genius. And the colors! Why can’t we use more color? I wanted to reproduce it in vector format of all things. Here’s Octo!

I want to show that just because you’re illustrating in this format doesn’t mean it has to look “vector-ish”. Stiff, perfect, flat. Use Bézier curves to create a controlled freeness?

KNOW YOUR TOOLS

You might have seen this before but I can’t emphasize this point enough. The more you know the tools—and I don’t mean “just how to use them”, the more you can be relaxed and really draw and produce art in the truest sense. Think about your pencil. You’ve been using it so much and most of your life that you know how to make sharp lines, dull lines, shading, scribbles, minute details. You feel comfortable turning it on it’s side and rubbing the sh*t out of it to get massive coverage and getting it all over your fingers and the base of your palms. That’s how you should know your tools!

SAMPLE PROCESS: ACRYLIC

For all you snobs out there, I exclaim, “I love acrylic!” Nothing covers an area the cleanest and dries the fastest then acrylic. You can come back to an area just seconds later and not smear and dilute, all the while retaining its vibrancy. It’s a medium that you choose if you want to paint something that looks complete and rich in one afternoon.

Getting Started—Even if you draw well enough to be able to do this project free-hand, using the photo image behind the drawing will keep you from getting mired down in decision making of such a simple and fun piece of art. Plus, it’ll go faster. Use this image by dragging onto your desktop or take a snapshot: [Command/Shift]4 and drag (Mac).

Document Setup—Using Adobe Illustrator CS3 for Mac; letter; horizontal; CMYK; sized to fill the entire document for more control.

Intitial—By importing or placing the photo image you create a layer. Name that Layer bitmap temp. Dim it and lock it in the Layers palette or in the Layer Options window.

Create another layer above it named drawing.

Select the Pen Tool; 2 pt; black outline; and draw the outline of Octo. Don’t stray too much from the actual silhouette of Octo or else it will be harder to follow the patterns within. I varied a couple of arms on the right and pulled out one end on the left.

Create a layer between the two existing layers; name it Art. I put this portion of the drawing on it’s own layer because it’s an area that doesn’t have any strokes that we’ll do later—purely an organizational and visual thing.

Change the Pen stroke to .25. Keeping the stroke thin allows you to see the edges of the drawing behind it. Draw all the shapes of the head. Because I like the weird expression of Octo I followed the shapes precisely.

Color Usage—As I want to keep the charm of the painting and shapes of pattern true, the same holds for the color. Pick the color right off the photo. Go into the bitmap layer and show Dim Images to: 100%. Keep locked.

Back to the Art layer and select only the shapes you want to fill blue. Use the Eyedropper Tool and click on the most dense true color area you want.

In the Color palette, round off the percentages to whole numbers. It keeps the processor happy and it’s easier to remember for reference if needed. Obviously, you can just type in the color manually but this is just one of the ways to get a color from a bitmap image.

Fill the selected shapes this color.

Note—Keep shapes selected. If you deselect, your next Swatches window will not show the same options. If you do not get a window that looks like the following, this is why.

Go to your Swatches and CLICK/HOLD that down icon far right shown with the magenta arrow.

Scroll down and choose New Color Group; choose Selected Artwork; name it Octopus.

You’ve started a group of color swatches within this artwork. “Yeah, so?” You say. It just keeps this color group embedded in this Document—that’s all. Every time you open this Document, the swatches will be waiting for you without deleting your other color options.

Repeat this process with each new color. I selected 7 colors for Octo: Cyan, Rose-Orange, Yellowish-Orange, Bright Sage, Tea Leaf Green, Purple and a Bluish-Gray. Again, I stayed very close to the original.

COLOR COVERAGE

Background Color—Create a new Layer named Legs below Art and above bitmap temp. Draw the orange and green shapes dividing the legs. Draw the large cyan and orange color areas for each leg. Note—Draw past the outline of Octo. You don’t want to mask objects unnecessarily making your file size large.

CLIPPING MASK

Unlock drawing layer and select the outline. Hold the Selection Tool (V) over the orange box to the far right (it will turn into a pointing finger); hold [OPTION] (you should see a squared plus sign above the pointing finger icon); and drag the orange box to the Legs layer. You have just copied the outline onto the Legs layer “in place” (same X,Y coordinates as the layer you copy from). Lock drawing layer.

Note—Whenever you drag and/or copy an object onto another layer, that object will automatically be placed on top. (It is crucial to have the outline that you are using be on top of everything you want to mask.)

Choose outline with the Selection Tool (V) make no fill and no stroke then [COMMAND]A for Select all; go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make or shortcut by using: [Command]7 (Mac).

Head and Chest Art—Create a Head/Chest layer; lock other layers; make only Head/Chest layer and the bitmap temp layer viewable. Draw the shapes of the head and chest. As before, copy a clipping path from the drawing layer and mask the any of the shapes extending outside the outline of Octo.

DETAIL

Brush Strokes—Adobe Illustrator has a pretty good brush filter selection and I use them all the time but in this case I couldn’t find the randomness found in real brush strokes. Not only that but I couldn’t find a way to outline an Adobe brush stroke. If anyone knows of a way to do this, share, please. You can also create a thick stroke and outline it. You can then add and subtract points to move around but it seems like a lot of busy work. So I opt for hand drawing the black brush strokes just like you did with the shapes. Make a Strokes layer. Crank up some tunes and get into the zone!

Sample of outlining a thick path vs. a manually drawn brush stroke
Select all your hard work and fill with black; no stroke.

TIME

Continue to draw the patterns; fill with color; mask; and add strokes. Repeat and repeat—no cheating and cloning any shapes and brush strokes. Well, I guess you could. Whatever works best for you.

With digital illustration this part can be the most enjoyable and the most laborious. I seem to get more impatient with digital art. My mind thinks that because it’s digital, things should take less time. And ‘you know what? It does, but you still have to put the time into it.

FINAL TOUCHES

Change the stroke on the drawing (Orange Outline 2) layer to orange. Duplicate that layer and drag it to the very bottom. Make this stroke Black and 15 pts.

In usage: I’d place Octo on a vibrant blue background. It really shows off the colors and quirky shape. ¡Viva Octo el pulpo!