This tutorial will take you through the entire creative process for developing and creating a precision vector based caricature illustration. You can learn more about the illustrative design creative process at my site IllustrationClass.com. Let’s get started with this tutorial.
Introduction
Rather than focusing on a tip or trick approach for you to repeat, this tutorial will take you inside a complete creative process you’ll be able to adapt and customize for your own illustrative projects moving forward. In a nutshell, it goes beyond mere tools, and gives you insight into laying a proper foundation for creating well crafted vector artwork.
You can find the Source files in the directory labeled ‘source’ that came in the files that you downloaded. You may wish to look through them briefly before we begin.
Step 1a
Even when creating vector art, the ultimate success or failure of your final product will come down to the fundamentals and how strong of a creative foundation you build upon. This requires not just tool skills in AI, but also analog skills like thumbnailing, sketching, and refined drawing of you art you’ll then flesh out in vector form.
This shows my initial thumbnail sketch. I was pulling this from memory. At this point you want to capture the raw essentials, don’t worry if it’s not dialed in because you’ll be making improvements as you move forward. Just work out the basic idea no matter how loose it may appear at this point.
Step 1b
When drawing a caricature of anyone you need to study their face. Isolate those attributes that best exaggerate his/her identity. The best way to do this is to gather reference images to help you study their appearance. Sometimes the attributes you exaggerate aren’t really true to life, but help the overall effect.
Step 1c
Once I know what I need to exaggerate, I draw on top of my initial thumbnail sketch tightening and improving the overall drawing, while adding details I’ve gleaned from the reference material.
Step 2
This may seem redundant, but I once again re-draw on top of my previous drawing, making further improvements and tightening it up even more. Note how I only need to draw half of the art since this is a symmetrical illustration.
Step 3
I scan this tighter sketch into my computer, then using Photoshop I copy the art and flip it. I want to get a good idea of how my art will feel. I then print this out and use it to draw my final art from which I’ll then use to build my vector shapes from.
