The homepage has to stick out
This website is still rather new, only about 2 months old, so obviously not complete. But I was still beating myself up over the boring home page of mine. It had just a portrait image of me that you would typically have on a resume and some text. But I wanted something a bit more interesting, colourful and well... "happy". A "cartoony" illustration was fitting in my view.
But I am not used to working in Illustrator
And it shows in the first illustration! I knew about the tools on the left side of Illustrator mainly due to a past of using #InDesign quite a lot. That's the great part about Adobe, once you get to know one, it becomes easier with the rest. However, tuning myself into an illustration was new to me and had no idea how to tackle this little Sunday assignment.
Used an image to as a canvas
The first try was not pleasant to the eye. So since I did this on a Sunday morning, I made myself a cup of coffee and fetched a pastry, which is obligatory in #Denmark, and tried my second attempt.
I inserted an image to use as a guideline and then used the shape builder tool to draw out each feature, eyes, hair, nose etc. Each feature was ofcause separated into its own layer in order to play around with the arrangement. To make sure the blue background-color fitted the exact one used as my theme colour on the website, I used an old trusted friend: The Chrome extension named Colorzilla.
Third time's a charm
Although I liked the colourful illustration showing my brown hair and editing the blouse into a frisky purple. I did not want the image to seem to be out of place but rather merge it with the consistent and simple design of the website. As many would say; "Keep it simple stupid".
Less scared of Illustrator
It's October month, but #Illustrator is a friendly ghost that I would love to play with more in the future. Perhaps I'll make a fourth version of this illustration that is prettier and happier.
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