PNG-24, Gradients and Gradient Mesh in Illustrator.

One thing I've never really tried is gradients in Illustrator, I understand how they work in Photoshop to a certain extent. I think that understanding gradients within this software could unlock so much potential towards creating some really high class pieces of work. It can give objects much more life and by understanding this you can control that crucial element. I thought I could also kill a few birds with one stone within wanting to try out gradients as well.

I have imported my drawings into illustrator plenty of times before. Most of the times before they were quick sketches. I went round these outlines with the pen tool. The way I did it was very time consuming, so I have found something new that could hopefully save time on future projects. I have used the live trace tool in the past, but I think it looks a bit pants for what I usually create.



Here is what I drew for trying this shizz out...



...and this is the pen I used to create it, it's also another one of the birds that I killed with the one stone. It's a ZIG artist sketching pen (alcohol-based permanent ink), and it was a pleasure using it. It has a pen has a plastic fine tip which a good size. The line it gives isn' t as smooth as the Faber-Castell pen that I've been using. The pen gives the illustration a rougher look I guess, I created this one quick time so maybe it was just the way I was drawing. I like it thought, very much so.



Now I needed to keep the black outline and get rid of the white around it. I did this by acquiring the magic wand tool and selecting a white section. I proceeded to Select > Similar which highlighted all the white parts within the canvas like so...





Once selected I deleted it all.



When I did this I noticed there were still some slightly grey parts left on the outline, it needed to be an opaque black line. I sorted this out by just going into the blending options and changed the colour overlay to black.



It was now time to export the line work to illustrator. Keeping the background of the canvas transparent I went to File > Save for Web. I then changed the preset to PNG-24 and made sure the transparency box was ticked. This works just like the multiply layer style that I use in photoshop to create my illustrations and it means it's not being turned into a vector either. So if I ever really create anything in illustrator I must make sure I scan the image in at a high resolution.



I opened illustrator and placed the line work within it. I then quickly coloured in the face and made a circle behind it.



when the circle was selected I chose the gradient swatch and it changed to this manner.



Then to change the colour of the gradient I made my own swatches for the colour I wanted inside the gradient and I dragged this into the bar that determined the output of the gradient.



Once I played around with different outputs I couldn't get anything to look right so I decided the circle needed to be changed.



I ended up making the circle a tad bigger, this meant I could stretch out the gradient to make the fade more gradual and much smoother. The gradient size was now spot on a fits nicely behind my sketch. I did think it looked a tad plain at this point so I had a look into what I change about it.



Looking at some of the tools I had at my finger tips I came across the knife tool. I've experimented with it before, but never applied it properly to something. I duplicated the circle and used the tool to cut out segments from the circle on top, which I changed to this mustard yellow colour. I then chopped up the circle on the bottom into more segments (all the segments that were knifed are displayed in screen grab) and then changed each panel to a different shade of green.



Another circle was placed in front of the others and I gave it the gradient effect and changed around the black and the white so the fade was disappearing into the canvas.



I then started to play the with style of the gradient circle to see if I could get the black to disappear and the white fade to stay present.



Now I had worked out how to use gradients I wanted to look into using mesh gradients. Just like with all the other processes and techniques I've learnt in this entry I used online tutorials to guide me through them.

I first started by making a shape for where I wanted my mesh gradient to sit within.



Going to Oject > Create Mesh Gradient, it brought up this dialog. I set it to 2 rows and 2 columns and it created a mesh.



I then edited this mesh with the Direct Selection tool to follow the contours of the guys nose.



With the Direct Selection tool which points I wanted to be coloured in and proceeded to the swatches to select the required colour.





I used the mesh to create the shading on top of the eyebrows as well



I am really pleased with the way this has turned out. I think I enjoy working in illustrator more than working in photoshop so my learning how to create transparent PNG images means I can now use this software much more often. My line work can now stay the same as what it looks like when I first create it on paper, so now I have another piece of software to help me refine and experiment with what I'm drawing.

Finally got my head around making gradients and mesh gradients. I'm going to keep experimenting with both techniques, especially the mesh. If I wanted to progress more with this way of creating gradients I would learn how

Wheat pasting - II

Got a quick photo on my journey to college this morning of what I pasted last night. This wooden fence was the smoothest surface I could find within a close proximity to my home. I didn't really want to post it anywhere that would piss people off and anywhere in public view just incase I messed it up. But I am very pleased with how it has turned out. It survived the night and is still holding strong. It's good to know that the paste I made is thick and strong enough. There were a few little lumps of paste that must have accumulated when I smeared the paste on top of the artwork. This could be because the paste or the paper I used was too thick. I will definitely be trying this again, so I'll experiment with different variations of the paste and different types of paper to see what works best. I really would like to see this becoming a regular thing that I do with my illustrations or any kind of artwork that I create in the future. It could drive me towards giving my illustrations some real purpose and meaning if I chose to start posting my pieces up in various places for the public to see.

Wheat pasting - I

I've found a tutorial online explaining how to make your own wheat paste. This is how it is done...



-Poured a little under a pint of water into a pan, gave it a bit of heat.



-Tipped 3 of these big spoons of flour into a glass.



-Added just enough water so it covered the flour then stirred until the mixture turned into a pourable paste. I made sure no lumps were present in the mix, gave it a good stir whilst the H20 in the pan was heating up.



-Brought the mixture to a boil whilst continuously stirring it.



-Once the glue had thickened I added and stirred in a tablespoon of white gold.



-The paste was now ready to go. I cut out my artwork, sourced a brush and transfered some paste to a little tub.

I then went out not too far from where I live to find a spot to paste up my artwork. I found a flat surface and smeared it with a decent amount of the mixture. I placed the cut out onto the area and applied more of the paste. I would've got photos of this process, but I had to keep a look out for people walking their dogs or whoever and it was getting quite dark at the time.

I shall go back to the spot tomorrow to see if it's all gone to plan...

Logo - II

Here is what I ended up with so far with the logo for the Rugby Club. After sitting in the final crit Graham made it very much clear that the content was really irrelevant to the project as a whole, so I thought I may as well scrap this idea as the whole idea of this self directed project was to create something to be wheat pasted onto a wall. I am already quite efficient with illustrator so there is no point really explaining my process for making this logo. So sometime this week I will try find a tutorial of how street artists paste their work onto walls, print something out and have a go myself. I would have probably been overwhelmed by the task of printing and pasting something of that magnitude anyway, so I think it would be best to start with something small.

half tones - colour seperation.

Found this in depth tutorial by Jimmy Heartcore on 4-colour process separations within Photoshop. It's something I should really try and understand as it will be important to me if I ever needed to take any work to print in the future. We had been shown this in a lecture given by Christian, but he only skimmed the surface and had shown us the different channels and not how to convert each one so they are able to be printed separately.



This is the photo I chose to work with.



These are the individual CMYK layers separated. I did this by going into the channels and then splitting them. This took each layer into different canvases so I could convert each layer into half tone.



Once I had all the canvases open I then converted each one to the required half tone for each colour. I first started with Black. Once in the half tone screen I changed the frequency to 70 and the angle to 45°. Each time I made the half tone for each colour I kept the frequency at 70 and added 30° to the angle every time, so they ended uo like this :-

Black - 45°
Cyan - 75°
Magenta - 105°
Yellow - 135°



I then erased all the white areas on each of the layers, duplicated them and merged them together. This created a much thicker dot and the half tone became more clear.



This is a preview of how the black layer was coming along...







I then dragged each of the layers into the Black canvas, lined them all up, went into each ones blending options and changed the colours. It took me a while to find the CMYK pantones as it isn't very clear how he finds it on the video, but I found it in the end with a bit of luck.



With each of the colour layers I created a blank layer...



...then merged the colour with the blank layer so the blending option had disappeared...



...I did this so I could change each layer style to "Multiply".







Once each layer style was turned to "multiply" the colour separation was completed.



This is it a little zoomed...



...and at about 300% zoom.

I'm glad I have learnt how to do this now. I would definitely like to take this technique into the print room some time real soon. I do have my screen printing elective coming up in April so this is a real handy technique to understand before I start that project.

This is the new pen I've been trying out. Apparently it's size 'M'. I'm going to have a guess that it stands for medium. Found it in a shop in Leeds and was ridiculously over priced. I do really enjoy using it though as this tip is quite thick and gives a nice moderate sized line. May look into buying other various sizes.

Crayyyyons

Today I really wanted to push myself to creating things with limited time and with a mark making tool I am not usually used to using...



...and here is one I created. I found some crayons that I used way back in high school and at one point I decided to create this creepy goblin character. Using colour before entering photoshop when I illustrate is usually not what I'm into, but this has definitely opened my eyes for sure. I only spent about 10 minutes sketching it out and I made sure ever time that the crayon was put to paper that I did so with precision. I really liked mixing a whole array of colours to create different shading styles and textures.

I did however start this particular piece in the way I usually create my illustrations. With a green vert crayon I create a general outline, but as I went on to add more colours I faded those lines and added on top of them with darker browns and black. Really want to experiment more with the use of crayons within my practice. If I kept at using them and possibly mixing it with other mark making devices I could hopefully find something that works well for me towards creating my illustrations.

With experimenting I wanted to see how I could take it to the next level. I started out by painting a few oval shapes which consisted of various colours within each one. When I had created these oval shapes I wanted see how things would turn out if I added some ink on top of the watercolour...





...Once the ovals were dry I started to add my pen to the green card I had painted on. I chose the green card as well to see what would happen to the colour of the watercolours. I had to make the paint quite thick so it would appear more opaque than if I applied a lot of water and not enough paint. Even though in some parts you can see the green background coming through, there are still parts with block colour. I really like this effect! I really enjoyed creating the background to my illustration first and then adding the line work on top. It was definitely something different to what I'm used to and can see this as a way of definitely improving my illustrations...



...With all that that in mind I then went on to create some more characters with watercolours and a pen. This was one that in my eyes turned out quite well. I had to think a little before I created the coloured background. Like where I was going to position the nose and the ears (I didn't think too much about the eyes and the lips, I just went with it) because I wanted to used various colours to differentiate those parts before adding the linework. I realized after that I could've done this the other way round as I could've used a water proof pen, but like I said within using this technique I could really improve my illustration style and start creating some interesting stuff.