- Width Tool And Stroke Profiles
- The Expanded Stroke Panel
- Brushes
- Symbols
- Dynamic Symbols, & New Raster Brushes in CC
- Stroke Variance
- Gallery: MCKIBILLO (AKA Josh McKible)
- Brushes & Washes
- Gallery: Stephen Klema’s Students: Jillian Winkel, Stephanie Pernal, Amber Loukoumis, Jeffrey Martin, Nicole Dzienis, Tamara Morrison
- Gallery: Sharon Steuer
- Painting Inside
- Painterly Portraits
- Gallery: Greg Geisler
- Pattern Brushes
- Gallery: Donal Jolley
- Brush Corners
- Gallery: Lisa Jackmore
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Gallery: Sharon Steuer
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To create this illustration for her “Good Food in the Microhood” UntappedCities.com posting, Sharon Steuer began in Photoshop, where she collaged photos she’d taken from different vantage points into one imaginary cityscape. After placing it as a JPG template in Illustrator, from another image, she copied objects styled with her custom calligraphic brushes and pasted the objects into her new file, which added the custom brushes to her current Brushes panel. She then deleted the objects and used these brushes to paint her black line drawing. In a new layer she added color using default bristle brushes and a pressure-sensitive Wacom tablet and Art Pen. To easily switch between brushes, colors, and layers, she’d first select a path styled similarly to the one she wanted to make and then deselect (
-Shift-A/Ctrl-Shift-A). To draw a new, blue, wide transparent bristle brush stroke on the Color layer, she selected a blue-wide stroke on the Color layer, then deselected, and drew. To draw a new calligraphic path on the lines layer, she selected and then deselected one of those. With Edit Selected enabled in Brush Options, if she kept a brush stroke selected, she could redraw the path (instead of draw a new one). After adding a few more detail layers, she created an “unwanted lines layer” and hid it, so she could then select and move unwanted lines to that hidden layer. Lastly she created two overlapping artboards: one to frame the crop when featured on the website front page, and the other sized for insertion within the post. To see this posting, which also contains a link to an article on CreativePro.com detailing how this image was created, go to UntappedCities.com and enter “CreativePro” in the search field.
Gallery: Sharon Steuer
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For her UntappedCities.com “Good Food in the Microhood” article on San Francisco’s Tenderloin restaurants, Sharon Steuer used Photoshop to stretch, crop, and color-correct her photo of the Vietnamese soup called “phở.” She placed the photo in Illustrator off the artboard (as a reference) and used the Pen tool to draw a few closed paths (filled with gradients). Locking that first layer with the objects and photo, she created additional layers, where she painted her image using two bristle brushes at default settings (one Angle and one Mop) and a custom calligraphic brush. As the image progressed Steuer decided to modify the bowl’s shape in ways that would be difficult with traditional or raster tools; she selected the bowl objects, then compressed them vertically using the bounding box. After the article posted, she reworked the image as a fine art piece titled “Vegan Phở.” Resizing some elements and adding others, she printed a square variation in archival materials. Coating the print with clear acrylic medium, Steuer cut and collaged it onto a 6"x6" cradled board and then drew and painted on the surface with watercolor pencils. She applied fixative and a UV coating to the finished artwork.