Discovering Illustrator

For the first time since i found illustrator i have found or been taught rather another use for the program than Live Trace. The pen tool is way more flexible than i ever would have thought and the tools like Merge  colour and shortcuts here and there have helped greatly. Here are a couple of experimental pieces which i learned the most on.

This kind of stuff i really like because it is being used more and more in todays advertising industry and because it to me is simply visually pleasing to the eye.

This experiment was a useful lesson as it taught me that creating things that immitate brickwork or roof tiles doesnt have to take all day doing repettative patterns or drawing every block individually. The CMD button and D repeats whatever the last command i executed was, which makes projects like this one really easy.

The minivan was a good test as i learnt how to apply things like light, shadow and a rusted effect. I also had to learn how to combine the lines using grouping and ungrouping which makes things like fill colour  easier too.

Some simple experiments using pathfinding.

This was done using the pen tool to make a curved line then using the Width tool to expand the lines and then a simple copy paste.