Illustrator progress

It feels like this blog has come to be about me learning Adobe Illustrator.

I met Rene Engström at a eggnog-party last friday, and she told me about how she draws her comic Anders loves Maria directly in illustrator. This was very interesting for me to hear, as this program has taken up my time quite a lot recently. She explained that she sketch and "ink" the comics with her drawingpad. I thought "Hey, I also have a drawingpad, maybe I should try the same thing!"

So, last saturday I tried out my skills with the drawingpad combined with Illustrator. I began by drawing a quick sketch in blue,

as this is the way I usually do by hand.

I then did the "inking" over the blue after
I had created a new layer on top of the blue.
After that I created a new layer and put it under the "Ink" layer.
I did a few coloring and lighting effects.
To hell with the outlines, who really needs them?
But I wanted more out of this picture ...




... So I did a background!

In this complete picture I have experimented a bit with gaussian blur to get the picture focused on the girl, and perhaps create some kind of photographic feel to the whole mess.

Interesting, huh?