It has been a long time since I created artwork completely using Adobe Illustrator - these days I draw all my line art in Procreate and then port it to Illustrator for colouring and layout. But I've always enjoyed the vector style of artwork created by Hydro74 and Sweyda and Daniele Caruso's (@danielexcaruso) work fits into that same style of bold, line-heavy, aggressive style of vector illustration.
I wanted to get back into doing this style so his Domestika course served as a good moment to be inspired again. Here's how I got on...
This Domestika course was a bit easier to follow for me compared to their other courses since Daniele speaks in English (most of the other courses I bought are in Spanish). There are 23 videos in total spread among five major units. It's a lot of content and represents great value.
I am already familiar with most of the Illustrator tools that he uses but I did still pick up a lot of tips that I didn't know before - notably his use of gradients, half tone, blending and the specific way he uses the Pen tool. His live drawing is speeded up and he narrates at various points along the way when he has something of interest to point out. Be prepared for a LOT of videos of him moving tiny little shapes around.
I was keen to see Daniele's approach to image creation from initial idea to final product. He first creates a mood board based on cool things on the internet, then draws quick thumbnail sketches on a sheet of paper. From those, he'll select a favourite thumbnail to sketch in a better form and then finally, he'll redraw that sketch again, this time much neater, tracing over his previous sketch using a light box.
It's interesting to see this old school approach to design creation - I used to do that too, I even have a lightbox in the attic somewhere. But I must admit I haven't touched pencil and paper for ages, I do all my sketching on the iPad Pro, which saves so much time. However, I do miss the raw natural feeling of drawing on paper. Regardless, it's reassuring to see that I still use the same steps (moodboard - thumbnails - sketch v1 - sketch v2). Daniele offers a good tip here - that it's always worth getting as much detail in that final sketch as good as you can before vectoring as it saves potential trouble later on down the line.
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| 1. As per Daniele's instructions, all projects begin with very simple thumbnail sketches, here's one of mine. |
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| 2. A more detailed version of my chosen thumbnail. |
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| 3. In the Domestika tutorial, Daniele reworks on his sketch again and again until it is a highly refined piece. I did the same and made sure my sketch was spot on - something I wouldn't normally think to do. |
So far, so good. In Units 4 and 5 Daniele takes his sketch and embarks on the process of digital inking. Nearly all of this is done using just the Pen tool. It's incredible just how much attention to every single mark he makes on the piece, no line or shape is ignored. He will zoom in hundreds of times in scale just so he can adjust a tiny pointy line that is slightly out of place.
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| 4. Digital inking in Illustrator - this is the basic outline stage. |
In my project, I made copious use of the blend function to join pointy strokes together into a saw-tooth style shading effect. I'll be honest, I had a devil of a time getting the blend to work how I wanted. It's pretty tricky when using it to align objects over a curving path because it doesn't always want to align things neatly. Daniele himself points this out and just says it's a glitch with Illustrator. His work around adds extra anchor points onto the blended objects which keeps them neatly aligned while still being able to cut down to shape.
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| 5. Main shading stage, lots of use of pen strokes and blending. |
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| 6. Flat colour stage - you can see the reference image I got of Planet of the Apes, which I increased in saturation and then picked out some nice colours. |
I use Adobe CS 5.5 which is ancient (c2012?) so it's good that Daniele keeps his tool use on Illustrator fairly simple - mostly all of it using the Pen tool. This means any version of Illustrator will do the same (and in fact any vector app too, eg CorelDraw or Affinity Designer, although the latter does not have the blend function).
Mind you, it would be nice to have the adjustable line width tool in Adobe CC and also some other functions, but I'm not paying for a subscription when I have a perfectly good working copy (legitimately bought) of CS5.
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| 7. Daniele shows three different shading styles - basic, gradients and half tone. In my chimp piece, I used all three. |
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| 8. Daniele is a master with blending and shows some advanced techniques. I didn't use his advanced methods, which is why my jagged shading looks too mechanical and boring. I'll practice this aspect much more in future pieces. |
I learned a lot watching Daniele draw his snake on dagger piece. The sheer level of detail he puts into his work is outstanding. On a more technical level I quickly picked up his most used keyboard shortcuts (eg good ones were: shift-x to switch stroke/fill mode, Z or alt-Z for zooming in and out, double clicking for isolation mode etc). These tiny time savers add up to a considerable amount when working on a big piece of art.
Another good tip is that Daniele draws in vector chunks. This means the art is easier to correct. When I draw in vector I tend to unite all the shapes very early on. Looking in close detail, I realise now why my vector pieces always seem to lack that extra level of refinement, the devil is in the detail. I need to level up on the way I apply blended shapes for the saw-tooth shading effect. I'll definitely be re-watching parts of his videos again and again.
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| I drew this in 2012, look at the really poor way I use the Pen tool when drawing the shading and line work. I think watching this Domestika course has helped me improve on this area a lot. |
This course is an excellent primer on basic tools in Illustrator and also an insight into how to create the style of artwork that Daniele excels at. For me, it served as great inspiration to get back into vector drawing plus I picked up a ton of useful tips and shortcuts. Already I can see a difference in the way I used to draw in Illustrator (lion image above) and now. I have a much better understanding of how to utilise Illustrator's most basic tools to create a more professional looking final image.
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| I have posted my chimp artwork onto Redbubble so you can buy a prints, posters, stickers etc |
I hope to make many more drawings in this style going foward.
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