I had run into a bit of a wall with my stuff lately, and oddly enough it was a series of graphic design projects that just gave me a great idea. I work better with shape than line. It's why you don't see many drawing from me on Devart, mostly paintings. That said, I still sketch everything I work on with a pencil or thin paintbrush tool.

It hit me the other day while I was laying out some graphics for a magazine page. They were just flowing along, I was barely even having to think about where things went... they just went. Why couldn't my illustrations be that easy?

Epiphany time, now I'm starting to lay out a few illustrations in Illustrator (Crazy, no?) and it seems to be working a lot better. I'm able to keep my gestures more solid, and work out values at the same time I work out shape and line.

Does anyone else use a similar method? Any better programs for this kind of stuff? (Illustrator is a bit clunky, as great as it is?) Any suggestions from those more experienced arists?

I should have some art based on this up later, and I'll show some process in case anyone can help me out.



P.S. If you like music, and happy, you need ot listen to Owl City. Look them up on Pandora Radio (www.pandora.com) or something. Kinda in the same vein as Playradioplay! or Postal Service. Good stuff. (they talk about cities a LOT for some reason)