Self-Portrait in Illustrator

Click the image below for a larger version.

Self-Portrait in Illustrator

Dashed Line

Illustrator Dashed Line with Rounded Corners

1. Draw a line with the Pen tool.

Draw a line.

2. Open the Stroke panel (Window > Stroke).
3. Increase the Weight. I set mine to 10pt.

Increase the Weight.

4. Click the Dashed Line box to turn your line into a series of dashes.
5. Experiment with the widths of the Dash and the Gap in between dashes. I set my Dash to 20pt and the Gap to 15pt.

Dash and Gap

6. To get rounded corners on the dashes, click on the Round Cap icon. This made my dashes too close together, so I changed my Gap to 20pt.

Round Corner

Photoshop Part 1: Create a Custom Brush

1. Create a new 800px by 600px document with a white background. This file will be used just to create a custom brush.

New Document

2. Select the Rounded Rectangle tool from the Tools panel.

Rounded Rectangle tool

3. Set your foreground color to black by pressing D on your keyboard.

Black Foreground Color

4. Up in the Control panel, make sure that the tool is set to Shape layers.

Shape layers

5. Set the radius up pretty high. I set mine to 100px. This determines the degree of roundness at the corners. We’re going to draw one very large dash.

Radius of 100px

6. Draw a single huge dash with the Rounded Rectangle tool, in the middle of your image window.

Single Huge Dash

7. Press Ctrl+E (Mac: Cmd+E) to merge the shape layer onto the white background.

Merge Down

8. Edit > Define Brush Preset.

Define Brush Preset

8. Give your brush a name. You will see that the brush is very large. You get better quality images if you reduce the size of a very large brush, rather than increase the size of a brush that was drawn too small.
9. Click OK.

Name the Brush

10. Close the document. You don’t need to save it. Your brush is saved, which is all that matters.

Next page: Putting the Dash Brush into Action

Cartoony Pencil

Notice how even the strokes are in the logo concept below on the left. The revision on the right has an unevenness that creates a more casual, cartoony feel. It has more personality.

Even Outlines vs. Looser Outlines

We’ll work with an image of a pencil, but this technique will work with any vector drawing that has outlines. You will need a basic skill with the Pen tool to draw the initial pencil image.

Draw a Pencil

1. Set your Fill to none, and your Stroke to black.
2. Select the Pen tool (Press P on your keyboard).

Pen Tool, Fill and Stroke

3. Draw a basic pencil shape.

Basic Pencil Shape

4. Add a few details.

Add Details

5. Select all: Ctrl+A (Mac: Cmd+A).
6. Open the Stroke panel (Window > Stroke).
7. Increase the stroke weight. I chose 7pt.

7pt Stroke

9. Change the strokes into outlines: Object > Path > Outline Stroke.

Outline Stroke

10. Let’s make the pencil all one piece. Open the Pathfinder panel (Window > Pathfinder ).
11. Alt+Click on the “Add to shape area” icon.

Expand Shape

12. Now rotate the pencil a bit to add some movement. Double-click on the Rotate tool in the Tools panel.
13. Enter a degree of rotation. I chose 30.
14. Press V to select your Move tool, and click somewhere outside of your drawing.

Rotate the Pencil

13. So there’s our basic clip art pencil. We’ll make it cartoony on the next page. Save your file.

Logo Revision 5 for Orchestrated Home

I’ll post all of the stages as the logo goes from concept to final.

April 17, 2009

First I began with some loose sketches. Pencils sketches seem at first like they might add extra time and effort, but they actually save me time every time. Plus, by coming up with more ideas than I really need, I can cull out the ideas that don’t really captivate or are too detailed.

Logo Sketches for Orchestrated Home

Below are the six logo concepts I created yesterday.

Logo Concepts for Orchestrated Home

April 18, 2009

Here is the first revision, based on feedback asking me to “work with #1 and #3″, and for “the house to be personalized so as not to look like clip art. Possibly illustrating the house in a slightly cartoon like shape would do this” and “a more custom font.”

Logo Revision 1 for Orchestrated Home

April 26, 2009

Here is the second revision, based on feedback asking for “three fonts maybe each with a different color combo and seeing the logo with the text at the right in an example or two. Then tell me or show me how the logo would fit into a banner.”

Logo Revision 2 for Orchestrated Home

May 2, 2009

“These are really cool! We are very, very close.” A few color changes, and one rearrangement/font change.

Logo Revision 3 for Orchestrated Home

May 5, 2009

A few more font and color tweaks.

Logo Revision 4 for Orchestrated Home

May 8, 2009

The client asked me to round off the pinkie knuckle a bit more, reduce the boldness of the word “home”, and show some more shades of green. Almost done!

Logo Revision 5 for Orchestrated Home

Based on my latest Blue Lobster illustration, I put together a new business card. But first, here’s the one I rushed so I could get it printed for a business conference a few weeks ago:

Original Business Card

So this time I spend a great deal more time on the design. I also printed out the design at actual size on my home printer. Lesson learned: take my time, then proof, proof, and proof again.

The black text does the job. I hope you agree.

New Business Card

Original Blue Lobster Logo

Now that I’ve a bit more time on my hands, I have the luxury to work on that initial concept still rolling around in my brain. I began a sketch tonight:

Sketch for Blue Lobster Logo Design

Next step: referencing my photos and the live model himself in his watery home, I will draw the pinch-happy creature in Illustrator. He’ll shoot out gusts of swirling water and bubbles. I’ll probably do further refinements like textures in Photoshop. Finally, I’ll rework the whole Web banner above to be better integrated, and with nicer-looking menu buttons.

Four Lobster Photos

Incidentally, the little guy’s name is Ocelot. My husband is Russian, and when he first heard the word ocelot he was so enamored with it that he named several things in our home Ocelot, including a house plant.

Update 3/26/09, 5:00PM

Here’s what I have so far in Illustrator. The sections of blue carapace are created using a gradient mesh and three shades of blue. The brown joints between the tail pieces employ a simple brown to gray linear gradient. The whitish swimmerettes under the tail use a radial gradient from white to light gray.

Logo, Work In Progress No. 1

Update 3/26/09, 9:00PM

More!

Logo, Work In Progress No. 2

Update 3/26/09, 10:00PM

Still more. He still needs spots.

Logo, Work In Progress No. 3

Update 3/28/09, 11:40AM

I think I’m finished!

Completed Blue Lobster Logo

Update 3/28/09, 2:10PM

I lied. I needed to pump up the amount of orange. I’m really happy with it now. I hope you are too.

Completed Blue Lobster Logo - Revised

Update 3/28/09, 8:00PM

The new banner is live! Yay!

Screenshot - New Web Banner / Design

CMYK Color Wheel

Click on the image below to view a much larger version.

CMYK Color Wheel

The color wheel above shows three colors in addition to the primary colors. In between each pair of primaries is a secondary color: a mix of two primaries. Cyan and magenta make blue. Magenta and yellow make red. Yellow and cyan make green.

I’ve shown a formula for each color. The numbers are the respective percentages of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and black (K) in each hue. These are the numbers you would put in as the CMYK values in the Color Picker.

Mixing CMYK Color

When you add cyan, magenta, and yellow together, you get black – in theory. In reality, it’s a murky soft black, so printing a rich black requires the addition of black ink, referred to as the Key color. Mixing these four colors together in various ways gives us almost all the colors in the rainbow.

CMYK Venn Diagram

Out of Gamut

Many colors which are visible to the naked eye are not reproducible on a printing press with CMYK. These colors are called “out of gamut”. We can get pretty close, though. Photoshop and Illustrator have commands you can use that bring your colors back into gamut, so that they print a predictable color.

In the Color Picker, look for an icon of a little triangle, with an exclamation point inside, next to the current color: If you see that icon, your chosen color will not print in CMYK. Click on the triangle to choose the closest in-gamut color.

CMYK Out of Gamut

Four-Color Process Printing

In four-color offset lithography (also known as process printing), a full-color image is separated into four plates. These plates look somewhat like photo negatives after they are etched. The black areas of the plate hold no ink. Conversely, the lighter the etched area on a plate, the more ink it will hold. There is one plate each for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

CMYK Plates and Inks

Plates printed for process printing such as these are not printed with solid ink*. They are actually comprised of patterns of dots we cannot distinguish with the naked eye. Try looking at a magazine ad through a magnifying lens some time. It’ll look something like this:

Dot Pattern

Each of the four plates is printed in a grid of dots. So that the dots are not overlaid exactly on top of each other, the grid for each plate is turned at a different angle. The black grid is at 45°, magenta is at 75°, yellow is at 90°, and cyan is at 105°. When printed together, they form a rosette pattern.

CMYK Rosette

*Solid ink is printed when we use spot colors.

RGB Color Wheel

When you remove red, green, and blue light you get black, or no light at all. Mixing these primaries together in various ways gives us all the colors in the rainbow – literally. On a monitor, it’s only 16.8 millions colors. But that’s a lot, right?

Click on the image below to view a much larger version.

RGB Color Wheel

The color wheel above shows three colors in addition to the primary colors. In between each pair of primaries is a secondary color (a mix of two primaries), and two tertiary colors (a mix between a primary and a secondary). Red and green make yellow (I know, weird, huh?) Green and blue make cyan, and blue and red make magenta.

I’ve shown two formulas for each color. The first is the degree around the circle, the top (red) being 0° and a full rotation clockwise being 360°. You will see color expressed as a degree in some functions in Photoshop. In particular, it is used for the Hue slider in Image > Adjustments > Hue and Saturation.

The second formula indicates the values for red, green and blue you would enter into the RGB fields in the Color Picker. Each of these RGB values can be anywhere from zero to 255, making 256 possible values. 256 for red x 256 for green x 256 for blue = the approximately 16.8 million colors we talked about above. Zero in the Red box means that no red is contributing to the selected color. 255 in the Red box means that Red is as strong as it can possibly be in the selected color. Ditto for Green and Blue.

RGB Venn Diagram

• You can get a pure white with R:255, G:255, B:255.
• You can get a pure black with R:0, G:0, B:0.
• An equal number for all three colors (other than 0 or 255) will get you various shades of gray; the higher the number, the lighter the gray.

For more details on pinpointing just the right color, see below.

Red

Red

Red

In the RGB color wheel, red is at the top, at 0 degrees.

Pure red is created with a value of 255 for R and 0 for G and B. To achieve a darker red, reduce the value for R. To achieve a lighter red (pink), add a bit of G and B at equal amounts. Oranges can be created with pure red and some green. For example, 255-125-0 is a rich orange.

Yellow

Yellow

Yellow

In the RGB color wheel, yellow is 1/6th the way around clockwise, at 60 degrees.

Pure yellow is created with a value of 255 for R and G, and 0 for B. To achieve a darker yellow (which in light or paint ends up greenish), reduce the values for R and G. To achieve a lighter yellow, add a bit of B. A nice yellow-green requires a reduction of red.

Green

Green

Green

In the RGB color wheel, green is 1/3th the way around clockwise, at 120 degrees.

Pure green is created with a value of 0 for R, 255 for G, and 0 for B. To achieve a darker green, reduce the value for G. To achieve a lighter green, add a bit of R and B (that gets me in the mood for some Motown). Turquoise can be yours if you add a generous dose of blue to green.

Cyan

Cyan

Cyan

In the RGB color wheel, cyan is 1/2 the way around clockwise, at 180 degrees.

Pure cyan is created with a value of 0 for R, and 255 for G and B. To achieve a darker cyan, reduce the values for G and B. To achieve a lighter cyan, add a bit of R. You can get a cornflower blue by leave R at 0 and reducing G by half.

Blue

Blue

Blue

Blue, our final primary, is 2/3th the way around clockwise, at 240 degrees.

Pure blue is created with a value of 0 for R and G, and 255 for B. To achieve a darker blue, reduce the value for B. To achieve a lighter blue, add a bit of R and G. Voilet/purple is created by adding some red into a pure blue.

Magenta

Magenta

Magenta

Magenta, our final secondary color, is 5/6ths the way around clockwise, at 300 degrees.

Magenta is created with a value of 255 for R, 0 for G, and 255 for B. To achieve a darker magenta, reduce the value for R and B by equal amounts. To achieve a lighter magenta, add a bit of G. A pretty fuchsia color can be had by reducing the blue.

Browns

Browns tend to fall in the muted-orangey area. Here are a few to get you started:

I finally own the Adobe CS4 Design Premium suite, and I installed it last night. I will post mini-guides for the following interfaces very soon:

• Photoshop CS4
• Illustrator CS4
• Dreamweaver CS4

I am so hyperventilating with excitement!

Color Picker

The Illustrator Color Picker

A) The Color Field

Color Field

The square is 256 levels of saturation (vividness) across the top, from pure white to pure hue (color; in this case, a bright blue). The square is 256 levels of value (lightness/darkness) from top to bottom, adding more black as you go down, until the color is pure black at the very bottom edge. This means there are 65,536 possible colors in this square alone.

B) The Color Spectrum Slider

Color Spectrum Slider

The best practice when you want to completely change the current color is to start with B (the Color Spectrum Slider), and then narrow your choice to a particular value and saturation in A (the Color Field).

If you multiply the 256 hues in the Color Spectrum Slider with the 65,536 colors in the Color Field, you get 16,777,216 colors available in the Color Picker.

C) The Current Color and D) The Previous Color

Current Color / Previous Color

Comparing the two colors comes in really handy if a shade of green is not quite natural enough, for example, and you want to add a touch of gray or brown. Or if you are coordinating two colors in a color scheme and want one color to be the same intensity as another, but a different hue (like a muted blue with a muted green.)

E) RGB Color Values

RGB Color Values

Each of these values can be anywhere from zero to 255, making 256 possible values. 256 for red x 256 for green x 256 for blue = the approximately 16.8 million colors we talked about above.

Zero in the Red box means that no red is contributing to the selected color. 255 in the Red box means that Red is as strong as it can possibly be in the selected color. Ditto for Green and Blue.

• You can get a pure red with R:255, G:0, B:0.
• You can get a pure green with R:0, G:255, B:0.
• You can get a pure blue with R:0, G:0, B:255.
• You can get a pure yellow with R:255, G:255, B:0.
• You can get a pure magenta with R:255, G:0, B:255.
• You can get a pure cyan (blue-green) with R:0, G:255, B:255.
• You can get a pure white with R:255, G:255, B:255.
• You can get a pure black with R:0, G:0, B:0.
• An equal number for all three colors (other than 0 or 255) will get you various shades of gray; the higher the number, the lighter the gray.

By the way, RGB is referred to as an Additive Color Mode, because when you add all the primaries together at full strength, you get pure, white light.

F) Hexadecimal Color Value

Hexadecimal Color Value

Hexadecimal values are like RGB values but expressed in a different format. The first two digits are for Red, the second two for Green, and the last two for Blue. Because each digit can be any of sixteen values, a two-digit combination can represent 256 values. See how that relates to RGB? And similar to RGB mode, a double-zero means no color (or black if all six digits are zero.) What is special in Hexadecimal is that after 9, the brighter colors go from A to F.

Here are some Hexadecimal colors:

• White: #FFFFFF
• Black: #000000
• Red: #FF0000
• Green: #00FF00
• Blue: #0000FF

G) CMYK Color Values

CMYK Color Values

The values for C, M Y and K are expressed as percentages. These percentages represent how much of that color ink would be printed on paper. For example, C at %100 means that a particular area would get 100% percent coverage of Cyan. We will not be using CMYK often in these tutorials, so I won’t go into greater detail here.

Other Features

The HSB values are for Hue, Saturation and Brightness. This is another way to control color. Hue means the given name for a color, Saturation means the strength or vividness, and Brightness means how close it is to white.

The OK button saves your color change and closes the Color Picker.

The Cancel button closes the Color Picker without making changes.

The Color Swatches button lets you access a multitude of preset colors.

The Only Web Colors checkbox is a throwback to when many people did not have monitors that displayed 16.8 millions colors. It makes the Color Field show only what were once called “Web-Safe” colors. Don’t worry about this.