Intermediate

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Illustrate Grapes

August 17, 2008 in Artwork, Tutorials, Vector by Vyoma | No comments

Illustrate Grapes

  • Software: Inkscape (or Adobe Illustrator)
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Subject: Grapes

In this tutorial, you will look at the process of creating a vector illustration of grapes. Drawing grapes is quite easy – with all the oval shapes put together. Applying color renders on the other hand can become a bit tedious, and it helps to keep the color palette organized.

Lineart

Illustrate Grapes - 0 - Sketchc

Try drawing the grapes bunch in GIMP (or Adobe Photoshop) and get the general idea of the color palette with respect to the light source. Import it into your vector editor of choice (Inkscape or Illustrator).

You can download the above color study if you want: Grapes – Study (PNG format)

Reduce the opacity of the imported image to around 40% to 50% and use a polygon tool and mark out all the outline key points.

Illustrate Grapes - 1 - Lineart

Using the node edit tool ( [F2] in Inkscape), shape the polygon tool exactly around the grapes bunch using the underlying image as a guide.

Illustrate Grapes - 2 - Lineart

Draw another shape outlining all the inner shapes of the grape fruit. I drew them one by one using polygon tool and then performed a Union operation on them. It is show as a red line above but the color is not important as we will be making the stroke width zero after we apply the colors we want.

Flats

Illustrate Grapes - 3 - Flats
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Painting A Potion Bottle

August 14, 2008 in Digital Painting, Tutorials by Vyoma | 1 comment

Painting A Potion Bottle

  • Software: GIMP (or Adobe Photoshop)
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Subject: Potion Bottle

A potion bottle may seem like quite a complex thing to paint even for a simple shaped one due to all the reflections and colorful contents. But a pretty straigthforward workflow makes it easier.

Lineart and flats

Painting A Potion Bottle - 0

Make use of extensive guide lines in a separate layer to get the shape of the bottle right. You could even use other tools like Inkscape – for now, I just went free hand.

Painting A Potion Bottle - 1

You may imagine the potion bottle to be quite colorful with bright colors and think of using brighter colors as flats. But choose some dark value color – it is the contrast of the bright colors against the dark ones that makes it look colorful.

Painting back to front

Painting A Potion Bottle - 2

The key to paintinig objects with transparency is to render them from back to front. Here, the far side glass is rendered first, and then the containing liquid and the cork.
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Depth by Color – Vector Landscape

July 31, 2008 in Artwork, Tutorials, Vector by Vyoma | No comments

  • Software: Inkscape (or Adobe Illustrator)
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Subject: Simple Landscape

As promised, this is a walk through of the practical application of the theory of ‘Depth by Color‘. In this article, you will see how a simple vector artwork is made interesting by adding to the depth perception of the shapes using color.

Simple Illustration

Depth By Color - Landscape - Lineart

Here is a simple illustration of a landscape which leads the eye from the far vanishing point to the large leaf-less tree on the foreground.

Download the lineart to experiment: Landscape Lineart – SVG | AI

(I have used Inkscape to create the AI format of the lineart – not sure how compatible it would be while opening in Adobe Illustrator).

Depth By Color - Landscape - Flats

As you can see – the shapes does add to the depth and creates a layered effect. But this can be further enhanced by modifying the colors with varying degree.
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Illustrating Chain Links

June 22, 2008 in Tutorials, Vector by Vyoma | 3 comments

Illustrating Chain Links

  • Software: Inkscape (or Adobe Illustrator)
  • Level: Intermediate
  • Subject: Chain Links

Illustrating vector art of chain and chain links is quite fun once you get the hang of it. The most important thing is to get the basic shape right.

Basic Shape

Illustrating Chain Links - Basic Shapes

Getting the basic shape right is very important. Draw as many grid lines to assist you as required. There are basically two shapes you need to draw. One that is parallel to the canvas and one that is perpedicular. The parallel one is composed by subtracting shape 1B from 1A. (In Inkscape use Path > Difference from the menu). See to it that both the shapes are of same height and also that the perpedicular one fits into the hole of the parallel link.

Illustrating Chain Links - Basic Shapes Verify
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