Technological advances have made some people choose to pursue digital illustration. There are at least three reasons why they fell in love with this choice. First, creating digital illustrations gives anyone more freedom to experiment and explore. When an illustration feels inappropriate, they can easily change it. Of course, these conditions are different when someone creates illustrations manually.
The next reason, software for creating designs is available in various quantities and continues to be updated from time to time. Of course, this makes illustration work easier and faster. Then finally, through digital platforms, a person's work can be more easily shared with many people so that it can be recognized more quickly.
So, to create digital illustrations, there are various techniques that you can find and apply. This technique is related to the type of work you will produce in the future. The following are the types.
Shading is one of the techniques commonly used in creating digital illustrations. This technique is used to create the impression of darkness, light, gradations and three-dimensional shapes in an illustration. There are two types of shading techniques that are often used, namely cel shade, also called vector coloring technique and soft shade.
The cel shading technique is in the simple category because it only includes the use of basic colors, shadows and lighting. The resulting gradation also looks less smooth. Even so, this technique is popularly used by comic artists to create illustrations.
Meanwhile, soft shade produces a softer gradation impression. This is due to the addition of color to the shadows of objects to make the characters more alive. Besides that, the lighting in soft shades is more varied because it is given a mixture of warm and cold colors.
Freehand is a technique commonly used by designers. This technique is done like drawing directly by hand. The difference is, because it is digital, it is done using a pen tablet which will connect the image to the design software. In general, vector-based Adobe Illustrator is the software that many people choose when designing illustrations. Because, it will make the image quality sharper.
With the freehand technique , designers are able to produce more complex image compositions. This includes fine lines, light, shadows, and illustration backgrounds.
Some digital illustrators often use the block technique to illustrate a person's face. This technique is done by covering or coloring the object with one color. The most commonly used color is black. This one color technique is used to produce illustrations that look like silhouettes or shadows.
There are two types of block techniques commonly used. The first is the positive block, which means adding color to the line art that has been created. Meanwhile, negative blocking is done in the opposite way, namely blocking around the object.
Do you want to make digital illustrations look like watercolor paintings? It's certainly not impossible, it's even becoming a trend among illustrators. To make this happen, you can use the watercolor technique. You can apply this technique in several software, such as Adobe Fresco which is quite popular. This vector and raster based software can help you produce practical illustrations with maximum results.
The first step to start this technique is to develop a color palette that will be used a lot. Just like manual painting where you usually mix one color with another color, you can also do it freely using this technique. If your digital colors start to get cloudy, you can simply edit the colors.
In manual illustrations, rubbing is also called the rubbing technique. You can do this method digitally with the help of various available devices. Digital rubbing is considered a new alternative that makes the process of creating illustrations fun.
So, by using the rubbing technique , you can produce the impression of thick and thin and dark and light in an illustration. Generally, this technique is usually used to create illustrations of human and animal faces.
These are five techniques for making digital illustrations that you can practice. You need to remember, the world of illustration continues to develop. From time to time there will be new techniques and software that you can use to support your illustration creation. Make sure you don't miss any information, okay?