It just reminded me of a lady who had fuzzy hair.

When the Rebonding trend came, she went for it. Not bothering that her hair was too short nor that a face was just a little too round. Turned out a pure disaster which stayed on people’s mind for years.

You know, she could have looked so much better with this look but she didn’t listen to the right ”rebranding” stylists…

Kind of fun, this is using the pencil tool which is a tool I normally don’t use as it’s difficult to control using a mouse (but now I’ve got a Wacom!). The smooth tool and erase tool are useful but first you have to select the drawing before they work.

The smooth tool is kind of amazing, the line can be jagged and you just have to move the smooth tool over it and it’s smooth! Much faster than altering anchor points one by one.

No new Adobe Illustrator tools used for this one but it is difficult to make the facial hair realistic. I have used the wrinkle tool for the moustache and beard and stylised brush for the eyebrows.

The hair took a long time, not perfect but tried my best using overlapping shapes (different parts of the hair) and gradient, lasso the points and eyedrop the neighboring color to make it look more natural.

There is this guy, he finds the life he wanted on the blue path.. but after a while, it starts to spiral and he decided to take another path.. but this one soon turns into a big question mark.. life seems exasperating for him!

But human beings are limited.. and sometimes when I encounter such moments of exasperation, I like to think that all these curvy detours that we take are actually all part of fulfilling God’s purpose for us.

Isaiah 55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Illustrator tool used.. dash stroke and copy the blue path on the lower map, changed to orange color, delete some points and place over the original blue path!

A new tool used in this portrait is the Brush tool.

One new tool which I have used is under the Transparency, choose Darken and insert a % of about 30%. This will change the black color shirt to a lighter greyish tone. Same trick I used on the eyebrows.

I’ve missed out mentioning that I will be putting up the cartoon portraits that I have done for you on my blog. However, in view of privacy, I will not post any name or any link that will connect to you unless you wish me to.

The above cartoon portrait is done using Adobe Illustrator and it does take some effort as I’m pretty amateur; below is a screen capture of the different noses, hairs and some tips on the tools used.

1. Using the Gradient Mesh tool – Do check out Veerle’s tutorial on gradient mesh.

This allows for different shading to have a more realistic effect.

2. The hair is not so easy to do.. it’s not perfect I know. I have used a combination of the tools:

Under Effects-> Distort and Transform -> Roughen and then follow up Crystalline

This is after I realised that using one single effect doesn’t quite acheive the effect.

From top right, the effects are Scallop, Crystalline, Pucker and horizontally, it’s Wrinkle, Bloat and followed by the original trace.

3. Noses require some simplification in cartoon and I have tried quite a couple before deciding on the one to use.

4. I have done this initially on .svg file using an open source software but then decided to use illustrator. Unfortunately, I did not save on an .ai file (illustrator format) when I have completed and subsequently could not re-open it on illustrator. So.. well, the source file is gone but the jpeg file still survives :OP

You can check out these 2 links for the little that I’ve done

1st sample

Myself

For now, I only know how to do 2 types:

1 is using pen to draw

2 is using adobe illustrator

The first type will be much faster because I’m still very new to adobe illustrator and will take quite some time to do one up. Like, I took 2 days to do up my own.

You can feel free to request, I’m not charging because I take it as a giving to blog community and also as a practice for me. First come first serve, need to send me a clear picture of yourself.

If you like what I draw, then simply credit to me by linking back to CluelessClay either thru blogroll, blog entry post, picture link or cluelessclay.com beside the picture whichever is applicable for your site and purpose of use.

I may post a paypal link in future for a tip if and only if it starts to consume all my time on earth!

you can email me at cluelessclay@gmail.com