the mayor of fun

Thanks! I’m equally impressed with your photography!

My path to learning Illustrator was a strange one. When I started in the printing industry about eleven years ago, the company I worked for used Freehand for vector artwork. At the time, it was a more user-friendly program than Illustrator. However most people would’ve agreed that Illustrator was still the superior vector drawing application. I used Freehand until Macromedia was sucked up by Adobe, and then the whole industry had no choice but to switch to Illustrator.

I got by as a mediocre Illustrator user for awhile, and then about three years ago I went to work for a packaging company. The outgoing prepress guru showed me how to do simple mechanical drawing in Illustrator. This concept blew my mind, as I had always thought that sort of thing could only be accomplished with a CAD program. After a couple years creating dielines for various cartons and other paper products, I decided to try my hand at making “art” with Illustrator.

My number one rule is to turn on the “smart guides.” Most artists I know hate them, and they can seem annoying at first, but I find them immensely helpful.

To get started, do a little “digital tracing.” This is what I still do most of the time. You can place a pixel-based image like a photograph into Illustrator, and then use the simple drawing tools to trace over it, then gradually refine it until you have a decent piece of vector art.

At least he knows a lot of words now. There’s nothing like breaching the language barrier to make things a little easier. Thank goodness we have trustworthy family members nearby! They’re lifesavers on evenings like this, when we want to have a mid-week date night.