Saturday, December 26, 2009

Illustration

I used to take a fair amount of pride in the quality of my illustration, but the bar has been seriously raised....There are many bead artists doing exceptional illustration these days. My personal experience with illustrating Marcia DeCoster's Beaded Opulence increased my skill set significantly. While this is quite good, as I prepare to send out kits, there are some previous set of directions that I am no longer comfortable with. Amidst the myriad list of things that need doing I stopped to redraw La Boquita.


I'm very happy with the improvements, I hope you'll agree it is time well spent.

From this

to this



For the curious, I use Corel Draw, all illustrations in one file, then I group and select each illustration and export it to a jpg file. I insert the resulting .jpg file into Word using insert picture. This results in a small file size document which I then save as a pdf and burn onto a cd. I'd love to learn Adobe Illustrator, but at the moment I only own Corel. Since I routinely contemplate moving to an Apple platform, I don't want to invest in additional software or learning curve until that decision is made.
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4 comments:

  1. Tündrüs (Jákóiné Klárik Tünde)December 27, 2009 at 1:35 AM

    Thanks a lot, this is beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  2. MikkiDecember 28, 2009 at 11:47 AM

    I know exactly what you mean. I work in Corel Draw and would love to move to Illustrator too but worry about the learning curve and having the time for it. I like how you did the bicones. I think as teachers we are always trying to simplify things for our students and good illustrations definitely help.

    ReplyDelete
  3. SuzyQDecember 29, 2009 at 6:42 PM

    Love it! Very nicely done. I use Illustrator but that's all I've ever used so I don't know how difficult it would be to a new user. I guess it would depend on how much time you see yourself spending on illustrating diagrams...If the Corel program does what you want it to, you might just stick with it.
    Happy Holidays!
    Sue

    ReplyDelete
  4. SharDon ExclusivesJuly 22, 2011 at 12:23 AM

    I struggle so much in drawing illustrations and there has to be a better more professional program out there. Which so you recommend?? I am now using photoshop but I have to draw each bead separtely. Should I invest in illustrator when I already have spent alot on Photoshop? Any suggestions would be appreciated,Thank you, Sharon

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