Artist Copy

The artist I decided to copy is Cronobreaker. After discovering their work on Pinterest, I have had interest in emulating their style with vectors/the pen tool. This is the original image.

To start off the process of my artist copy, I drew the image from observation. This was done using a mechanical pencil to achieve clean thin lines which I could work from.
I scanned the image in and opened it in Adobe Illustrator. 

After opening the traditionally drawn image, I used a pen tool to trace around the lines I had drawn with my pencil. This created a frame to which I could apply a compound path ([select lines with pointer tool]> [toolbar]Object > compound path > make ) and fill in the gaps.

This is what it looked liked after I had applied a compound path. I like this technique of creating line art as opposed to inking it traditionally as this allows for an alterable transition within the line.

To fill a block colour, I drew a rough shape over the lines, but keeping inside them so that I could lower the arrangement so that it fell behind the lines.

This is what it looked like after I altered the arrangement and the yellow colour fell behind the dark purple lines.

Using the same process I created the cell-shaded parts of the shape. To help make the process faster, I saved certain pen settings into graphics styles so that with the use of a single click I can transform vectored lines.

I repeated this process for each section of the burger and used colours that were on a premade swatch. I found however that the colours were not completely accurate. To alter this, I used the colour wheel.

To get the same shaped on both sides of the glasses, I made the shapes and then grouped them using the Pathfinder. After grouping them, I then duplicated them and transformer them horizontally so that it was reversed.

This is what the glasses looked like afterwards. I really like how this turned out as it gave the illustration a nice smooth feel.

This is what the whole head looked like before I added the eyes.
To achieve the same uniform affect of the  glasses, I decided that I'd use the same process of duplicating the same shape.

I really like how the head came out, and I think that the use of the same shapes for the eyes really adds to overall affect. It seems to add a balance and order to the otherwise chaotic feeling illustration.

This is the colour wheel that I used. I kept the image open next to my copy so that I could get the colours as accurate as I was able. To help further refine the colour, I used the colour sliders. This allowed me to alter saturation, hue, and colour balance. This was very useful as I found I had to make minor adjustments which otherwise would have proven very difficult on a colour wheel. 

 

 This is the transition of minor colour and line alteration. Though the differences are small, I feel that they do make a difference to improve the copy and make it more accurate.

This is my complete copy of a section of Cronobreaker's "Burger bits". I am really pleased with how this turned out as I have never done any vector art before, and I had to learn how to use all the tools and shortcuts. However I now feel confident in my ability to produce work in the digital medium of vectoring.
I think if I were to redo this piece I would use a colour swatch taken from the original piece so that I could get the colours absolutely perfect. On the other hand, I also feel that it would be taking away from producing a 'copy', as I'd be taking directly from the original and not pushing myself to improve my own colour knowledge.