Alright… After a few months, I finally have some time to sit down and try my hand at it again. I keep telling myself to take it slow and illustrate something quick and easy with little detail or no shading to make it look very simple, but by the time I get it all done, I want to add more and more detail. That’s my biggest set back right now…

I spent most of the afternoon and night taking my time with this and it eats up time faster than you’d think. One minute I’m doing the outline and coloring… Next thing you know it’s time for dinner. It certainly is a painstakingly long task but it rewards you with a very accomplishing feeling when you leap over some hurdles.

In my last few posts about vector art, I had mentioned that I was having some trouble with shading, polygons and gradients. My friend Jose that reached out to me a few months ago that has been ‘mentoring’ me in the arts of Adobe Illustrator has been kind enough to provide detailed instructions and tutorials using my own art as examples. He’s even made a small video explaining step by step on how to carry out certain functions. For a person who’s never touched Illustrator, something as simple as a video and DIY’s tailored to me – it’s earth-shattering in terms of making progress. Thanks again to Jose for guiding me through this process! I’ve made a promise to him that I’ll get one project done soon with his help…

Anyway, here’s a new project I started. I know I said I would finish with Jackie’s S2000 first but his proved to be too advanced for my level… So I’ll start it off with the Weld FRS with a little bit of my personal touch…

The original image – but with my Arise Sports bumper. 🙂

The progress I’ve made so far. This may not look like much, but this has been 5 hours in the making. The line work itself takes a few hours. The shading using polygons and gradients is a different beast to tackle on it’s own… I’ve been experimenting using different methods and layers and I love when I stumble across a new technique. Hopefully this time, I’ll have more progress on this rather than just being stuck at a standstill and then quitting…

Anyway – hope you all had a Merry Christmas! I got some goodies I just haven’t been able to take pics and share yet but I’ll hopefully have some time soon!