Unleash the Illustrator in you

Illustration Tutorials
I used to do a lot of illustration work within my design work, if a character was needed I would draw it. Now with budgets and deadlines getting tighter and more cheap royalty free images available I am afraid I often go for the quick easy option, buy and use a ready made image. For the first time in ages I actually did a bit of illustration for a job myself – something simple for some mother and baby packaging. I scribbled the basic illustration in pencil scanned it in and used painter to colour it up in a quite naive looking style. I had bought painter on sale a few month ago and never actually used it, I actually quite enjoyed it.

Then while browsing blogs on the net I came across http://www.illustrationclass.com Its very different to other sites I have seen most of which have tutorials which are computer based. The interesting thing about this site is that the illustrator sets you a series of tasks (its like being back at a foundation course at college). If you want to try and get creative (or are just bored) try a few of Von Glitscka’s illustration exercises such as his doodle sheets. Take his doodle sheets look at them in all directions (don’t take the first easy thing that comes in your head) then draw something a character, a thing, anything. This is one of Von’s Examples the black the original shape the red his drawing, I did try some myself but am too embarassed to share.

Another illustration lesson is to draw three things he suggests in the style of a famous artist. Here I have shown his illustration of a dog in the style of Picasso. He includes downloads as PDFs and jpegs of all the files and his examples.

Whether you are an illustrator, designer or student http://www.illustrationclass.com is well worth checking out.Images shown with kind permission of Von Glitschka.