little successes

Many layers make up the background - it's a little wobbly, but good.

I first learned to use Photoshop and Illustrator in the 1980's, when it was "the wave of the future" and only available on Macs. Photoshop was used for scanning in your reference sketches and converting to a masking layer. All the *real* drawing was done in Illustrator. I spent long hours in the computer lab creating images too large to fit on a 3.5" floppy, images that the "help lab" would compress by turning into 300 page documents of ASCII text.

A lot has changed since then. My abilities as an illustrator as well as the capabilities of both programs. For the last several years I have done the majority of my art "by hand", by which I mean non-digitally. Each time I attempted a computer-based illustration, I would get frustrated with the learning curve necessary to master the tools available in the latest software version. It was faster to create the whole thing with pen and paper because I had a proper understanding of what those materials could do.

A new layer for adding "characters".

Recently, my boss at my day job asked me to throw together a sign to put in one of the display cases. I could see the image I wanted in my mind. But all of the tools I would normally use were at home in my studio. I opened up Photoshop on my work computer and gave it a whirl. Being trapped at the office gave me the impetus to push beyond the first 17 mistakes of color and placement and work up something I could live with, even feel proud of. :)

The final image.

The only sketch I did "by hand"

Two things I would like to do next time around:
1. draw at home using my wacom tablet instead of the jerky mouse I used at work.
2. dig up that tutorial on how to make my own brush settings instead of just using the pre-sets.