the process: a cute AI globby brush

Here’s a fun little brush I just whipped up in Illustrator.

1. Draw a 1-pt line.
Screen Shot 2013 10 11 at 4 32 50PM
2. Go to the appearance palette, click on the ‘fx’ dropdown. Path->outline stroke.
Screen Shot 2013 10 11 at 4 33 04PM
3. fx->distort & transform-> roughen.
Screen Shot 2013 10 11 at 4 33 29PM
These are the settings I used, go with whatever makes you happy.
4. Drag the ‘outline stroke’ entry in the appearance palette ONTO the ‘stroke’ entry.
Screen Shot 2013 10 11 at 4 34 06PM
5. Drag the ‘roughen’ entry to just above the ‘outline stroke’ entry.Screen Shot 2013 10 11 at 4 34 14PM
6. Drag ‘outline stroke’ ABOVE ‘roughen’.
Screen Shot 2013 10 11 at 4 34 21PM
I tried other ways to make this stack of effects happen, but this is the only one that would reliably and repeatedly work for me – I’m pretty sure this is some kind of bug.
7. Now you have a cool brush with messy edges! This is a 6-point dark purple stroke, with two 1-point strokes slashed in over it in a lighter color.
Screen Shot 2013 10 11 at 4 34 45PM
Screen Shot 2013 10 11 at 4 44 25PM

I may never draw a squiggly highlight by hand again. I’m making a graphic style of this and sticking it in all my startup documents.

BONUS ROUND: PRESSURE SENSITIVITY!
Screen Shot 2013 10 11 at 4 45 24PM
Make a simple calligraphic brush. Now you can use the brush tool (B), vary the width of your squiggly lines with pen pressure, and choose different “sizes” of brushes with the stroke width panel.

You could probably do a bunch of other interesting things with this method of outlining a pressure-sensitive stroke, then applying live effects to it.
Screen Shot 2013 10 11 at 4 52 07PM
Stylize->Scribble looks pretty cool, for instance.
Or how about stylize->distort and transform->pucker and bloat?
Screen Shot 2013 10 11 at 4 56 14PM

Fool around, stack some effects up, experiment. If you were really dedicated you might be able to produce a really fun set of janked-up styles.

the modern artist: refrerence shot workflow

I have finally found a great solution for those tough angles.

1. Stick my phone into my Gorillapod tripod.

2. Launch Camera+ on my phone, switch to the front camera, turn on its timer mode, and set that to repeat.

3. Put the tripod on something. Probably the 15″ tall bong that lives on my desk.

4. Grab stand-ins needed for any props, and pose!

BJHRFwbCYAIG56u jpg large

5. Move the photos to the computer by dumping them into Evernote and forcing a sync; bring ’em into my work in progress and start drawing.