coyleart

Andy Warhol illustrations

Andy Warhol paid the bills in NYC as an illustrator before he became a pop art legend. He illustrated for record covers, magazines, advertisers and childrens books. He even won awards at it; I have an Art Directors club annual from the 50's that recognized his work. You can look more closely at the pictures from The Little Red Hen (pictured above) and the Magic Porridge Pot.

You can also flip through the Harper's Bazaar Archive Lookbook (from my earlier post here) and find a couple of Warhol shoes, but the collection posted on the blog Fabulous Doodles is more immediately satisfying. Check out Part 1 and Part 2.

Helpful keystrokes for Mac

I posted recently about the Glyphs panel, it's a great way to find the hidden characters you need from a font. But I've managed to memorize a few keystrokes that have saved me time in using the symbols you can't find directly on the keyboard. Here are two I use constantly:

 

copyright symbol, ©  =  option g

bullet, • = option 8

 

And here are two new ones that I used recently on a job, that I'm working on memorizing:

 

accent, é, as in the word purée = option e + e (or the accented letter)

degrees, ° = shift option 8

 

When you type option e for the accent, you'll see the accent highlighted and the next letter you type will appear under the accent. Wonderful! I was getting tired of going to Wikipedia for the words "purée" and "créme."

Happy Thanksgiving, kangaroo style

Thanksgiving got me thinking about a job I did a few years ago for this local client, (not the behemoth Australian-themed steakhouse chain). They wanted to have some fun with their logo, outfitting it for different seasons and holidays while adding a dash of their irreverent humor. The kangaroo and filmstrip logo is theirs. I had the pleasure of adding the holiday touches: the turkey, carving implements and shotgun shells.

I love a project like this. It's not my usual style, which makes it a fun puzzle to figure out and full of Illustrator goodness. And I used a lot of that calligraphic brush work I'll be talking about in my new Adobe Illustrator class next month. Happy turkey day!

 

First magazine covers

A friend sent me a link to this collection of first magazine covers for a variety of popular magazines we know and sometimes love, dating back to the 1800's

Illustrator class creation update

For the last month or two I've been all about Illustrator brushes over here. I'm gathering, researching and using them in my client work wherever I can. And I discover more uses for them all the time. In fact, the Pattern brush just saved me an hour on a project I was working on last month.

When I start designing an online class, I do a lot of drawing and experimenting and then writing to organize my thoughts. I'll start out with an idea, make pages of notes and sketches, stick post-it notes in my books and bookmark my online resources. Once I have a good notebook going I can start editing my wanderings into the form of a project. I want the artwork to be engaging, so that I or any of my students would enjoy spending several hours with it, and of course it has to be something I can break apart and explain. I look for an underlying Illustrator objective, so that in the time it takes to replicate the art project, there's an experience that hopefully will come to mind when you take on your own project in Illustrator. It's a time consuming process, but my hope is that it makes for a more useful class.

I also take in the comments and feedback I get from students in my previous classes and try to provide the kind of projects and tutorials that I hear people want. My next class is going to be a short workshop on brushes in Adobe Illustrator. I initially wanted to start with Art brushes or Pattern brushes because they are a lot of fun and provide plenty of opportunites to play with interesting art. But I've decided to save those for a later class, I need to back up a bit and start at the beginning.

 

The class I'm developing now is all about Calligraphic brushes. They aren't as flashy, but the more I explore, the more I get out of them. Calligraphic brushes are wonderful for creating smooth flowing linework in Illustrator, they are perfect for coloring and shading and they are unique to Illustrator; the lines you produce are completely editable and scalable. 

I'm always getting asked to teach about using Illustrator with the Wacom tablet, and this is another reason I'm focusing my new class on Calligraphic brushes. We'll have the chance to practice changing tablet settings as we work to get the most out of the brushes and the Wacom tablet. I'm working on the videos now and I plan to launch the class in December. I hope you'll join me!

Holly Shop Illustrator workshop

My holiday project workshop for Adobe illustrator is available now on ReneePearson.com. It's a great way to spend time strengthening your Illustrator skills while having fun working on holiday themed greeting cards that we'll send off to print. You get an hour and a half of streaming video tutorials, a printable PDF and all the files needed for completing the project for just $20.00. Everything is available immediately when you sign up, so you can dive in this weekend! The class page will tell you all you need to know, and if you like, watch the recorded chat from last week where I talk about the class and answer questions from fellow Illustrator artists.

A tile background in Illustrator

While working on this illustrated spa map for US Airways magazine, I discovered a fun shortcut for creating a mosaic tile background in Adobe Illustrator. 

Start by creating a rectangle large enough for the tiles, select it and choose Object > Path > Split Into Grid...

A dialog box appears where you can enter the number of rows and columns and the space between the tiles. Check preview, so you can see the results as you change the numbers.

Next, select all the tiles, and choosse Object > Transform > Transform Each... In the dialog box check Preview and Random and enter low numbers to make subtle and random transformations to the position, scaling and rotation of the tiles. Hit OK.

Now the tiles will have a more natural look, resembling a mosaic rather than a perfect grid. You can make subtle variations to the color of the individual tiles to make the effect even more interesting. In my finished Illustration I removed a few tiles to randomize it even more.

In my online Illustrator classes we use the Transform Each feature with type and in working with patterns. It's powerful because it allows you to scale a selection of multiple objects from each object's center point (or the reference point of your choosing). I love this feature and I'm always interested to hear how others use it!

the Illustrator glyphs panel

So much vector art is sitting untapped right inside Adobe Illustrator. One good place to explore is the Glyphs panel. Just choose Type > Glyphs and start searching your library of fonts using the drop-down menu at the bottom of the panel.

I've seen more than a few tutorials on how to draw a heart with the pen tool in Illustrator, but the Glyphs panel can save you a few steps. The font ITC Zapf Dingbats, a common font that most people have, comes with an assortment of hearts.

To get the heart, just place your type cursor on the artboard and double click the thumbnail of the character you want in the Glyphs panel.With your heart type selected, choose Type > Create Outlines to convert the heart to scalable vector art.

Look for other fonts in your library with the words "dingbat" or "ornament" and look for fonts identified as "Pro" they usually have more complete character sets that may include ornaments.

The menu at the top of the glyphs panel will help you narrow the current font you're searching to just the ornaments.