Red Reef Grouper
Red Reef Grouper
February 27th, 2023
February 27th, 2023
This was my first experience working with Adobe Illustrator and decided to keep it relatively simple. I just chose to translate on of my traditional paintings into Illustrator. I tried to have some restrain in getting too involved in details as this was my very first experience using illustrator and I had a due date around the corner.
This was my first experience working with Adobe Illustrator and decided to keep it relatively simple. I just chose to translate on of my traditional paintings into Illustrator. I tried to have some restrain in getting too involved in details as this was my very first experience using illustrator and I had a due date around the corner.
I mostly relied on the draw shape tool rather than relying on the simple shapes tools 'circle + square'. I'm used to working with more organic shapes hence I used the draw tool for my shapes. The fish is mostly an amalgamation of some fantasy grouper I used in my previous paintings. The patterns are not consistent as I couldn't afford to get too involved with details and kept it simple.
I mostly relied on the draw shape tool rather than relying on the simple shapes tools 'circle + square'. I'm used to working with more organic shapes hence I used the draw tool for my shapes. The fish is mostly an amalgamation of some fantasy grouper I used in my previous paintings. The patterns are not consistent as I couldn't afford to get too involved with details and kept it simple.
The patterns and details on the fish are their own shapes I drew and color filled. I was stuck for a while what to do to make the orange coral 'red/orange rocks in scene' appear more like corral without using too many shapes. I went through the styles/effects tab and found a sponge brush effect that was perfect. They are actually supposed to be red sponges that are inspired from real living/antique sponges here in Florida reefs. I only refer to them as coral since that is what most people think of seeing my paintings. I also applied a style effect to the water background to give it a bit more of an aquatic feel. The ground 'sand' also uses a grain texture to give it the illusion of a sandy seabed.
The patterns and details on the fish are their own shapes I drew and color filled. I was stuck for a while what to do to make the orange coral 'red/orange rocks in scene' appear more like corral without using too many shapes. I went through the styles/effects tab and found a sponge brush effect that was perfect. They are actually supposed to be red sponges that are inspired from real living/antique sponges here in Florida reefs. I only refer to them as coral since that is what most people think of seeing my paintings. I also applied a style effect to the water background to give it a bit more of an aquatic feel. The ground 'sand' also uses a grain texture to give it the illusion of a sandy seabed.
The most difficult aspect of working with illustrator came at the end with fitting the illustration into the canvas boundary. I'm so used to photoshop cutting-off any paint, lines, shapes, etc that go off the boundary by default, it was never an issue in photoshop. In illustrator, when I go to export the assignment, the program shows I large empty boundary beyond the boundary shown while illustrating and makes the overall image looking messy. I tried fitting the image into the boundary, but it didn't help. The background shapes were not perfectly square and I didn't want to waste time fiddling with the weights to transform the shapes with perfect angled sides. I was struggling to find the tool that allows you to edit the lines of the shape at the time. In the end, I decided to draw four black squares to act as frames for the image.
The most difficult aspect of working with illustrator came at the end with fitting the illustration into the canvas boundary. I'm so used to photoshop cutting-off any paint, lines, shapes, etc that go off the boundary by default, it was never an issue in photoshop. In illustrator, when I go to export the assignment, the program shows I large empty boundary beyond the boundary shown while illustrating and makes the overall image looking messy. I tried fitting the image into the boundary, but it didn't help. The background shapes were not perfectly square and I didn't want to waste time fiddling with the weights to transform the shapes with perfect angled sides. I was struggling to find the tool that allows you to edit the lines of the shape at the time. In the end, I decided to draw four black squares to act as frames for the image.