Experimentation with Adobe Illustration

After using the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator to draw a portrait of Marilyn Monroe  I wanted to develop my skills and become familiar with the software in my own time. As previously I have always used Adobe Photoshop was time consuming. 

This was the first one I did, simple shadow drops with fading in the opacity of the shapes. This illustration is limited in terms of detail yet the eyes did take some time with the different layers but overall I feel i did quite well and was beginning to understand the process and the software itself.

I then decided to take this further to develop my skills furthermore and try something slightly different and challenging.

This took me twice as longer as the first one I had many more layers and depths of layers in this illustration. Within the scarf there were many shadows and depths towards the shadows which took time adding effects creating the shadows from light to dark with more depth to show the creases. I feel I again did quite good on this illustration and was very pleased on the outcome.

So again I decided to take this to a next step and challenge myself even more.

From drawing and developing my skills in female illustrations I decided to experiment in a male illustration. During my experience I personally found male illustrations are slightly difficult compared to a females. I went into detail with the depth of shadows from the shirt to the face, blending in about 4 different hair layers together to get the perfect gradient. I also found the beard, moustache was quite difficult and I had drawn them several times before getting it right. I enjoyed these small activities and challenges I put myself up to as it developed my understanding with this technique and program.