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Description
Here my fursona scales a boulder to glimpse through trees at the scene ahead. The last of the snow has vanished from the foothills in the new warmth of spring. The gentle sounds of the rushing stream give signal of the snowmelt that replenishes the montane lake secluded in a verdant forest.

In this work, I challenged myself to use only Adobe Illustrator to craft an artwork using only the tools of vector art software. This means that instead of painting a grid of pixels in a "bitmap" program like Photoshop or SAI, I made outlines, curves, and strokes with their own independent precision. The mathematics involved in this approach give the name to such "vector" art. I was way outside of my comfort zone while creating this piece, but I think taking on such challenges is the best way to grow as an artist. I can credit classroom lecture as well as independent study of youTube tutorials for my current skill level in Illustrator. In the latest version known as Creative Cloud (CC), there is an ample set of tools that I'm just beginning to play around with.

The central lake pictured here uses a diagonal linear gradient to hint that the light source is from the upper right of the picture. I had fun with the artistic brush pack in painting the foliage of the trees in this picture. I found that the color swatches included with Illustrator were sorted into helpful palettes such as foliage, earth tones, seasons, water, sky, and stone. A feature known as Adobe Color CC also allows me to type in any words I like to search for and pull up color palettes created and shared by other users. The very complex premade brushes in this program allowed me to illustrate the rushing rapids of the depicted stream with a watercolor or painted appearance. I also liked using the included wood gradients to easily develop a sense of depth in the tree trunks up front. Additionally, the pen tool and curvature tool allowed me to develop complex, smooth outlines for all sorts of regions that I could then easily fill with color. I used the Live Paint tool to color different regions of my fursona after making the outline with the pen tool. Using the pen tool but no stroke (outline), I was able to add highlight and shadow to my fursona's fur. This cel shaded look was much faster to generate than my usual erase-away painted shading from Photoshop. Thanks to many time-saving features in this software, I estimate that this artwork took 6-8 hours to complete rather than my usual 16-20 hours for a comparable bitmap painting in Photoshop. I set this as a 2912x1800 resolution equivalent canvas in Illustrator only to find that opening that same .ai file in Photoshop yielded a canvas of 12133 x7500 pixels. I then scaled it back to 2912 x 1800 to retain the smooth vector art effect in my finished product. The aspect ratio approximates the golden ratio.

As an artist, I recognize the importance of taking on challenges to expand the range and depth of my skill set. I am thankful to have the guidance of comments and critique when working to further improve my abilities.

Description
Here my fursona scales a boulder to glimpse through trees at the scene ahead. The last of the snow has vanished from the foothills in the new warmth of spring. The gentle sounds of the rushing stream give signal of the snowmelt that replenishes the montane lake secluded in a verdant forest.

In this work, I challenged myself to use only Adobe Illustrator to craft an artwork using only the tools of vector art software. This means that instead of painting a grid of pixels in a "bitmap" program like Photoshop or SAI, I made outlines, curves, and strokes with their own independent precision. The mathematics involved in this approach give the name to such "vector" art. I was way outside of my comfort zone while creating this piece, but I think taking on such challenges is the best way to grow as an artist. I can credit classroom lecture as well as independent study of youTube tutorials for my current skill level in Illustrator. In the latest version known as Creative Cloud (CC), there is an ample set of tools that I'm just beginning to play around with.

The central lake pictured here uses a diagonal linear gradient to hint that the light source is from the upper right of the picture. I had fun with the artistic brush pack in painting the foliage of the trees in this picture. I found that the color swatches included with Illustrator were sorted into helpful palettes such as foliage, earth tones, seasons, water, sky, and stone. A feature known as Adobe Color CC also allows me to type in any words I like to search for and pull up color palettes created and shared by other users. The very complex premade brushes in this program allowed me to illustrate the rushing rapids of the depicted stream with a watercolor or painted appearance. I also liked using the included wood gradients to easily develop a sense of depth in the tree trunks up front. Additionally, the pen tool and curvature tool allowed me to develop complex, smooth outlines for all sorts of regions that I could then easily fill with color. I used the Live Paint tool to color different regions of my fursona after making the outline with the pen tool. Using the pen tool but no stroke (outline), I was able to add highlight and shadow to my fursona's fur. This cel shaded look was much faster to generate than my usual erase-away painted shading from Photoshop. Thanks to many time-saving features in this software, I estimate that this artwork took 6-8 hours to complete rather than my usual 16-20 hours for a comparable bitmap painting in Photoshop. I set this as a 2912x1800 resolution equivalent canvas in Illustrator only to find that opening that same .ai file in Photoshop yielded a canvas of 12133 x7500 pixels. I then scaled it back to 2912 x 1800 to retain the smooth vector art effect in my finished product. The aspect ratio approximates the golden ratio.

As an artist, I recognize the importance of taking on challenges to expand the range and depth of my skill set. I am thankful to have the guidance of comments and critique when working to further improve my abilities.