I decided that since I post a lot on the Xara X forum at Talkgraphics.com, that I should do a demonstration of some of the things I do with Xara X. Xara X (hereafter refered to simply as Xara) is a vector program that is easy to use with a small learning curve. It has some very powerful features which help make doing illustration fast and easy. We start with a standard 8.5 x 11 letter page in portrait setup. Also, I have customized my interface by moving toolbars around so it will look a little different from the default setup.
Today, we will be doing an illustration of Mel Gibson. This piece will be used for promotional purposes in a professional annual (American Showcase, Workbook, I haven't decided which yet.) I begin by importing(File>Import) a grayscale version of my drawing. By default, Xara imports photoshop files at 96 dpi. That's why this image is so large.
Then I use the same drawing to apply transparency to itself. You do this by selecting the bitmap you just imported in the drawing and clicking on the same bitmap in the bitmap gallery. At the top of the bitmap gallery, there is a button marked 'Transp' and this button will apply transparency to your drawing but leave the black lines. This is as effective as using the 'multiply' selection in photoshop layers.
I then convert the bitmap to a shape(Arrange>Convert to Editable Shapes)and fill it with red by clicking on the red swatch in the lower left corner. The purpose for making it red is to make it stand out from the rest of your objects. At a later point, I will be making it green when red ceases to stand out.
I then convert the bitmap to a shape(Arrange>Convert to Editable Shapes)and fill it with red by clicking on the red swatch in the lower left corner. The purpose for making it red is to make it stand out from the rest of your objects. At a later point, I will be making it green when red ceases to stand out.
I resize the height 10inches and I align(Arrange>Alignment) it to the center of the page. The reason for making it red is to see it easier as I will be drawing in a different color. I renamed the layer(Layer Gallery>Properties) to 'drawing' and I wil be using this drawing as a guide and I will be drawing on a new layer. I have created a new layer and called it 'Head'. This layer is above the layer called 'drawing'. Now would be a good time to save the file.
Then I select the freehand brush tool(F3) and drag the smoothing slider to zero. This will give me maximum detail, but will also add to the number of points each shape has. I will be editing down later and I will also be feathering edges. So it's better to have more and then edit down later. I also click the transparency tool(F6) and select 'Flat' from the drop down. Xara will ask you if this is what you want to do as it will apply this attribute to all the new shapes you will create. Answer 'yes' to this.
As accurately as I can with the Freehand tool, I follow the shape of the head, including the hair and chest. Basically envelop the areas that will have skin tone.
At this point, I import a color sketch I did in photoshop. I put that image on its own layer. I could have done this whole piece in photoshop, but I wanted more accurate control over shapes and the ability to edit them and change colors on the fly. The purpose of bringing in the sketch is to use it as a color sampler.
I will be going over the sketch with the eyedropper tool and I will be naming the colors I select as I go along. Select the color(s) you want as a basic average value skin tone and assign them names.The advantage to naming colors is that you can relate them to each other, making one color parent to its tint variants and shade variants. So if you feel that your drawing may be too saturated or the hue is off, you can adjust the parent color and all the children colors will change as well but maintain the same hue.
On the head layer, outline the hairline and envelop the hair. You don't have to be detailed going around the outside, only on the inside where the hairlne meets the face. After making the shape use the node editor to be more precise and delete some of the excess nodes.
Select both the hair shape you just made and the head skintone shape. Clone(Edit>Clone) the shapes. Then Arrange>Combine Shapes>Intersect.
You should now have something like this.
With the hair shape still selected, click on the color editor and roll the eyedropper tool over the dark parts of the hair from the sketch. Name that color 'hair dark' and make another color called 'hair light'. Make 'hair light' a normal color and not a shade of 'hair dark'. Roll the eyedropper tool over the light areas of hair for the 'hair light' color. Put the hair on it's own layer. The easiest way to do this is to cut(Edit>Cut) the hair, create the new layer and hit Ctrl-Shift-V which will paste the hair in the exact same position on this new layer.
Create a new layer called 'Shadows'. Then use the freehand tool to go over the shadow shapes in the face. Make sure that all your freehand shapes close, otherwise you cannot fill them as you've only created a line. In the same way that you made the hair through cloning and intersecting, you can do the same with shadow shapes.
By the time you're done you should have a number of shapes that look like this. Don't worry about overlaping shapes or about tangencies. It will come in handy to have some shapes on top of each other and some shapes tangential. Also, don't worry too much about precision, that's something that can be adjusted later on and it's something that's a matter of taste.
1. Create an ellipse with a line thickness of 1pt (right mouse click on a color to assign it as a line/stroke color). Holding down the CTRL key while dragging an ellipse will create a circle.
2. Clone it and fill the second ellipse with an arbitrary color(blue in this case) and put it behind the first ellipse(Arrange>Put to Back). Name this color 'Eyes Dark'. Create a child color and call it 'Eyes Light'. You will have to check 'Shade of Another Color'. At this point, make it a shade of 'Eyes Dark'. After it's created, click on the dropdown and choose 'Tint of Another Color'. Then slide it up to lighten it.. Remove the stroke/line from this second ellipse by right clicking on the no fill box which is between the color editor button and the red swatch.
3. Name the line color of the first ellipse to a new color called 'dark lines' or something like that. Select this ellipse with no fill and convert the line to a shape(Arrange>Convert Line to Shape). Drag the feathering slider to adjust make soft edges.
4. Clone the other circle and shrink it down to the center to form the pupil. By grabbing the corner handles and dragging inward while holding down the SHIFT key you will be able to keep the ellipse in its original position. Even if you blow it, you can select all three shapes and align them to center of selected objects. You might want to soften the edges of this ellipse with the feather tool as well.
5. Choose the blue part of the eye and click the fill too. From the dropdown, choose 'elliptical.' When you get the fill indicator, move the center of it down and right, then click on your 'Eyes Light' swatch. Ramp it up in the color editor if the value isn't light enough. You should now have an off-center gradient fill of two blues that are in the same hue.
6. Make two horizontal shapes on either side of the pupil. Soften their edges.
7. Add the shapes, clone them and rotate. In this case it might make it easier to see if you view in outlines. The image above is an illustration of what outlines look like opposed to anti-aliased drawing. When setting view quality, you will either see one or the other, but not both like I've shown.
8. Repeat this step until you've filled the the cornea with shapes. Then use the shape editor to make them look random.
9. I've selected the shapes I've made and combined them into one shape and added an elliptical fill. This will help with contrast for when I place highlights later.
10. Repeat this step, or clone and rotate them. I flipped, cloned, intersected, rotate and then grouped them. I also added transparency. I also cloned the shapes, converted line to shape and rotated. What you do here is a matter of trial and error as much as a matter of taste. There are a ton of ways of doing this and all of them are valid as long as your end result looks 'right'.
Clone this whole cornea and use it for the other eye. Be sure to alter it so that the two eyes don't look exactly identical. I made the eye on the right a little darker. Then put the eyes on their own layer.
Generally, I like to have multiple copies of objects I create that I keep off the page. That way, if I screw up somewhere down the line, I could backtrack to an earlier iteration. At this point I have copied the corneas into position and tweak them a little with the mould tool. At this point, the eyes will look a little weird, but we will take care of that as we go along. This is why it's handy to see your initial drawing underneath. It will help guide you to position your objects.
Now make the shapes for the eyelids and add the sclera(whites of the eyes). Most people don't have white scleras, but they are a little darker than white and have some hue to them. The eyelids are on a layer above the cornea and pupils and the sclera are behind the cornea on the same layer. Go ahead and alter the values of the objects you've created to make them look right. In this case, I convert the mould to a shape and ungroup it in order to edit the eye color.
I took a dinner break just now and coincidentally, 'Braveheart' was on. I realize I need to adjust Mel's eyes as they are much lighter than I have made them and have more of a cornflower blue color to them. Also the dark like that surrounds the cornea is a lot less pronounced. Remember, when doing a likeness, it's really dependent on the quality of photo reference you have of your subject. If a client asks for something significantly different from your reference, or provides you with reference that is way off from what you need, don't take the assignment.
I have also added eyelashes and a highlight. If I can't make his eye look right, then I know I won't be able to do a good likeness. Next I will work on the other eye. I have made the highlights a little blue in color as opposed to yellow window pane patterns. In my reference, the photo was taken outdoors and the highlight is a reflection of the sky as opposed to indoor spot studio lighting.
The upper eyelash is a shape drawn with the freehand tool and drawn on top of again with the same freehand tool after I completed it. I also used the contour tool with inset path on to mess with the overall size. Don't use this tool too much as it can radically alter your shapes from what you started with. The lower eyelash is a blend of two eyelashes placed on a curve and I played with the distances using the position profile slider. The same goes for the highlghts on the eye except that I added the shapes when I was done with them. Pretty much everything you see has some amount of feathering and or transparency applied. This helps the shapes blend into each other better and aids in turning form. Transparencies help the colors and values feel more consistent and 'together'. Now both eyes are close to done. I will now put them on a single layer and turn that layer off while I work on other sections.
So now the eyes are done I'm turning off the eye layer and I'm going back to modeling the head. I have my basic light and dark areas fairly established so now I'm going to be adding shapes in the light. These shapes will be lighter in value and will get progressively smaller. I don't want to concentrate on details anymore, I want the head to feel more volumetric. I will be putting these shapes on their own layers so I won't be fighting what's underneath.
At this point, I'm starting to get a headache from eyeballing all those face shapes and guessing their proportions and size relationships to each other. So I import another hand drawing that better approximates those details. This second drawing will guide me to make better shapes faster. I'm a big believer in drawing by hand. Conceivably, this piece could have been traced, but to anyone looking at it, they would say, "Where is the skill?" Another thing is that when you use the trace function, the computer does not design the shapes. The shapes are created by algorithms and measurements of values in a photograph. The most important thing is to DESIGN the shapes as you make them. Make conscious decisions about which shapes enhance form and which shapes destroy it. From there you can edit to only create what is necessary. I will be creating a fair amount of shapes because I want to, however, it really ceases to be necessary after I have enough of a likeness with solid values and good colors.
I basically zen-ed out and just drew shapes for a couple hours. I tried to have fun with it. I stopped filling in the shapes with color and value as it was giving me a headache. So I started creating shapes with no fill and only an outline. It was easier to see them this way and relate them to my drawing. Mainly I used the freehand tool and the shape editor. I drew both lights and darks. I will sort them out as I go along. I will also combine shapes by intersecting them and deleting some of them. It will be a bit of a bear to figure them out, but I think its better to have more and to delete rather than not have enough and have to create. After I edit down the shapes, what I have left should look like a topographical map.
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