PierreLR

Thanks Matt. I knew I'd miss something, checked and hadn't noticed, few bits of shading on front near wing.

My main complicated drawings are taking ages so I thought I would work on a few easier ones at the same time. This is the first to be finished.
For me Gulf Racing is the most iconic colour scheme in motor racing and I’ve been meaning to do a 917 but never got around to it until now. Unsurprisingly there aren’t a whole lot of overhead shots of it so this was based on photos of the 1:8 scale die cast model by Amalgam Collection. Very high end, about £10k but bespoke can apparently cost up to £120k. Not something to let the kids play with. 
On the Porsche 917K’s public debut at the 1970 Daytona 24 Hours, John Wyer's Gulf-sponsored team finished 1-2 in the race. The winning number 2 car driven by Pedro Rodríguez, Leo Kinnunen and Brian Redman broke the distance record by 190 miles.

A lazy day, I couldn't be bothered to do anything proper. So did this while watching/listening to the The Mandalorian episodes.

Had a break from a new "proper" drawing,. Another V for vector, nice to do without having to think too much.

I was one pixel off in each direction for the computer, should have measured at actual size.
 
 

This doesn't count as drawing as it's so easy and just a bit of fun 😉I keep meaning to do some classic mac icons but updated however I'm not sure what style to do them. Coloured versions of the originals or more fancy (anti-aliased) /skeuomorphic.
Today I was messing around with just one, the Mac, which seemed like a sensible one to start on. The first is the System 1 style which came, unsurprisingly, with the first mac's the 128k and then 512k. It was a challenge to do 😂All the icons were monochrome which makes sense as so were the screens. The second is just a recolour of the first just to see if it looked ok or not. The 3rd is system 7 style, they showed them grey for some reason, probably low colour. Then the final one is a skeuomorphic one. I didn't bother with system 9 as they went 3d by then and aren't particularly pretty. Also I think they dropped the classic mac icons by then as the power macs had replaced them.
I might do some more as even doing some skeuomorphic style ones aren't exactly taxing. 

This is the last drawing I’m going to do in AD, mainly as I’m so fed up of the layers panel, I’ve just had enough of it. Perhaps it’s only me but I must waste so many hours during a project because of it. I’ve a few in progress which I may possibly finish off sometime but will probably just start them again in something else. I’ll do some more styles and start on some brushes instead. Anyway…
This was a sort of a quickie. I was really more interested in drawing the Ektachrome box but really had to do the camera too, well sort of. I couldn’t find any decent quality references so normally would have given it a miss but decided to try anyway even though it was taken with Mr.blurry cam and only about 2k square. Of course I couldn’t find the fonts for the box so used the closest and edited them. The markings on the camera body are the regular Braun font, Akzidenz Grotesk. The digits and text around the lens are hand drawn guesses as it was just too blurry and so are fairly dreadful if you zoom in, so don’t!
 

Yes you can use snapshots but I prefer a separate backup file rather than having backups in the main. If the main somehow can't be read neither can your snapshots plus it's easier to look through them. The scripts copy the specified file to a specified backup folder (which must exist) and suffix the file name with the time stamp. I'm normally only working on one thing at a time but you can duplicate the lines to backup more than one file or duplicate the script for each project if you want. They work on any file, it doesn't care about the type AD/AP/AI/PS/XLS/DOC.. anything.
The first is for MacOS, backup.command, you need to make it executable. Open terminal and type "chmod 755 " then drag the command file on to terminal to complete it, press Enter. To edit it right click and select "open with" and use whatever, say textedit. At the top set the full path and file name to backup for SourceFile and the folder you want to backup to for BkupFolder, it's pretty obvious from the ones I have set. Double click to run it.
However running it will open the Terminal, and you will have to close it which isn't good. So you can use Automator to create a Mac Application that executes the script and that you can double click, add to the dock, etc.
Open Automator application Choose "Application" type Type "run" in the Actions search box Double click "Run Shell Script" Drag the command file in to the input box below the Shell: /bin/bash line on the right Click the Run button in upper right corner to test it. File > Save to create the Application. If you put in your dock it won't bounce, it just does it, don't keep clicking!
I'll post the Windows later on when I'm on my Win laptop.
 
 
Backup.command

It would have been quicker to fly to South America, find one and take a photo!

I needed a quick script to make it easier to create some styles that contained stripes using the fx gradient overlay but it obviously also works with the standard gradient. With just a few stripes and it's easy enough but when you are doing 20 or more with fractional percentages it's too much for my tiny mind to easily keep track of 
So just enter the odd and even stripe width percentages then where any padding should go and it lists the gradient stops to add. I copied the output to a text file and as I completed steps just deleted them from the list. It saved me a headache. 
Don't look too hard at the messy code, it was a quickie!
Stripes.py

Now that summer is truly over I've just started some drawing again. This is for a portrait, a bit more than head and shoulders shot. It will be my first attempt, and possibly last (it's going very slowly), at a realistic one or pretty much any person come to that. I've bits to do around the edge to blend in but will do that when the skin is done.
I guess it will show up here pretty much full screen, it obviously won't be that large when on the face, so zoom out or stand back.  I've included the AD file just in case you're interested. 
Lips.afdesign

Transferring images to canvas has been around since the early pin hole camera obscura's. Vermeer later used a lens based camera obscura for his works. Going in to the 1960's some photorealistic artists used projectors to project a slide on to their canvas. So the idea isn't new it's just that the way you go about it has changed.  
Now having said that there are still varying degrees of talent involved, my way is at the bottom end, it's more technique and patience than anything artistic, whereas  just tracing outlines and doing the rest yourself is at the other end. My stuff is more like the Adobe Illustrator vector mesh illustrations, which you don't see so much these days, except it's done with just the pen tool.
Not everyone will like it and some will think it's cheating or just tracing so nothing clever. But then I never say it's art or clever and often say anyone can do it, it's just for fun. So play along if you like.
The Subject
I saw a huge dragonfly fly past me last week when I was out cycling and it's something I've thought about doing before but I've never got around to it. So I thought that would be a good one to do next, it's fiddly with all the mottling and colour blends and the depth of field on a macro shot makes it even more so. I had a look for a decent size reference photo and came across this, it's not the same sort as I saw but it looks good. Unfortunately when you zoom in it has lots of artefacts but just gives you more work so that's ok (I think). The million trillion hairs will be fun (nope).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow-winged_darter
Below is how I’m starting this project. Sometimes I do the background last rather than first if it's a simple one or I don't know what to use but it's basically the same process for anything.
Adjustments
So the first thing I do are any adjustments I think it needs like levels or curves, just like any photo. Then  depending on the size I enlarge it, I use Photoshop's Preserve Details Enlargement option, I don't know what that would be in AP but someone probably will. So for this one I doubled the size to just over 5kx3k
Backups
I personally don't use the built in AD snapshots, I backup to another drive. It's up to you but, for example, if the file became corrupt so do your snapshots (correct me if I'm wrong).
Tools , Toolbar and Panels
I turn Tools and Toolbar off (not the context toolbar as you will use that sometimes) to give me a bit more space. I'm only using Pen (P), Move Tool (V), Node Tool (A) and Colour Picker Tool (I) so I use the keyboard shortcuts.  The only two panels I have are Colour and below it Layers. 
I also have Edit>Preferences>User Interface>Show Selection in Layers Panel checked. So that when you click on an object it's shown in the layers panel rather having to scroll through to find it. Although it doesn't always work.
Create The AD Document
Open the image in AD. I rename the photograph layer to Photo as I call my background group Background. For this I set the File>Document Setup>Colour>Colour Format to RGB/16 but sometimes I leave it at the default RGB/8. Then save it as a AD file.
Blurs
You soon get used to how much blur you need to use, so how much for a little bit up to how much to blend it in. Obviously it varies depending on resolution. One thing is you do need a blur on the edges or when it’s on the background it will look like it’s been out out and stuck on. Sometimes it might be only a tiny bit but do you do need some.
Create The Background
It's just a blurry background, You can either try and copy the photo or do it a bit differently but it makes sense to keep the light and dark areas in the same places. I didn't like the light green band across the top so basically got rid of that and added a few bits of brown. It might need some little adjustments at the end.
I created a rectangle with snapping temporarily turned on (that's about the only time I use it unless I add a border) and a bit of a left to right gradient using the dark colours from the photo. I then created the shapes in a sub-group, I set the group to 100px blur and then the individual objects to 100px blur too. I think it's just my imagination but I thought it showed less banding than just setting the group to 200px blur. So you you could just do that instead.
Oh remember to lock you groups.


The Reed
I created the reed shape, I added a little bit of brown to the basic gradient as it was bit blown out and bright in the photo. I'll add few bits of detail every time I want a break from the main image.
Abdomen
I never do it as one big object I break it in to parts. I decided to start with the abdomen to make sure I could get it looking anything like the photo. I wasn't sure how best to manage the objects in this part but decided to do a group per segment and under there a group for the details and a group for the basic colour bands.  I created the main shape filled with a gradient colour picked from the darkest part from each segment.  
So for my first test segment the basic background gradients looked like this at which point you think it's never going to work but it will

Then you add as much detail as you want or need. It perhaps doesn’t look like much but it takes me quite a time.

 

If you flip the dark fill over to stroke (with the background and reed turned off) then you can see how well it blends in with the photo, or doesn’t. You can then also toggle the segment and see if you’ve missed any obvious highlights or shadows.

(cropped)
Next
I might do the head next then move on to the near side legs but at this rate it's not going to be for a while.
So that should be enough to get you started if you really want to try it out. I'll try and upload the AD file if anyone's interested even though there's not a load in it (I just tried but it kept failing). 
 

Red Eyed Tree Frogs are native to Mexico, Central America and go all the way down to Colombia (perhaps on holiday). Its scientific name is A. callidryas, which comes from Greek words kalos (beautiful) and dryas (a tree or wood nymph).
I was chatting with someone about drawing and she liked to do Victorian style flora and fauna illustrations (I think there’s a proper name for it but I forget). I said that I usually try for realistic when I mess around for fun and she wanted to see something. One her favourite things are frogs, she has lots of ornaments etc in her house. So I did this, I think it might be the first living thing that I’ve done properly although I'll probably do a bit more to it sometime.
Just the pen tool, no textures.

 

This was mainly to try a few different ways of doing things to see if the extra effort was worthwhile or not. The main thing was not to use gradients but draw a bunch of objects to make pseudo-gradients so you've a bit more control over things. There a few rough bits like the leaves but it's ok. As usual it took longer than I expected, I should really have learnt by now.

If you post on here you should be expecting opinions and critiques otherwise don't post. If you want people to only say complementary things then put that in big bold letters at the top. Otherwise if someone has a negative opinion but they've spent the time to explain why, then that gives you the opportunity to look at what you've done and see if you think it's valid.  If it is then you can do something about it. That's one way you improve.Pretending it's art therefore no one else can have an opinion isn't the way to improve (and it's just a fairly boring photo not art). You did far more moaning than he did, don't take things so personally.

Thank you. Who'd have thought anyone would want any of my scribbles  It's quite a nice thing to have happened. 

I've been working on this for a few months and is the most complicated drawing I've done so far. I had thought about doing it before but knew it would be a ton of work, in reality it was about 10 tons, seemed never ending.
 
I decided to just do the front half to better show off the engine but I could re-use much of it if I ever wanted to do the whole car. As before it's just the pen tool, gradients, blurs and blend modes, so anyone could do it.
 
Hope you like.
 
As usual click to open, then click to display full size (although the actual output's a lot, lot larger).
 



 
 
 

You should think about prints of some of your work.

I’m not really much of a motorbike person but fancied doing one for a long time and Peter’s Ducati drawing reminded me that it’s about time I got around to it.
I didn’t want to do the whole thing this time, I wanted a small’ish project. There are a few crops that looked good but I wanted the Ducati name in it. This is a slight crop of a crop to make it A paper size. Adding depth of field, so some things at varying degrees of out of focus, was a bit fiddly at times but not too bad.
The petrol cap was sort of interesting as the reflections made it look very vector like in the photo. One of my favourite bits is the green petrol (I assume) pipe and clip (the clip took just over an hour) which doesn’t jump out at you but I really like it. Of course I also like my brake pivot screw that I showed the other day, together with the horn section. 
There is one bit I was lazy about, on the fork crown the black paint in the photo had texture which I didn’t do. However photos of other bikes show it smooth painted so I’m OK with that. I think the brown stripe on the tank was actually yellow when new but I’ve yet to see one where it’s still that colour other than on a model. It could be the models are wrong though.
Near the end it was killing my MacBook so I split it and used a master for the finished stuff. Ignore any banding on the tank it only shows up on the upload. There are a few tiny bits that I might do as I get time but I’m quite happy with it. The main image is half size.
I did think to look at how much they go for these days, they’re not cheap.

that sometimes make me happy.  I managed to spend a good couple of hours on a screw but wanted it to look just like the original (the background's just blocked in).  The wireframe doesn't even look that complicated, well I suppose it does for a screw, but it still takes time. It's full size from a 7216x5412 canvas. I was intending this one to be a quickie but somehow it doesn't often turn out that way with me. Now it's time to do a bit of work in the dark so I can see where the feint parts are.

Thought I had better finish it or I probably never would and it didn't take too long (although I kept fiddling with it). Added the cap too. It's not perfect but it will do. The paper in the background is just part of a photo vectorised.
 
 

Just fancied doing it for some reason, skipped the lettering as it was a quickie.

I did look to see if someone had done something trying to show what the original colours would have looked like, but couldn't find anything. Shame as I doubt they sky looks like it does now.
The main reason why doing this might not be the brightest idea is that I've never done people before, apart from low poly that doesn't really count. I've been trying not to think about it but, as I've said before, it's best to do the hardest bits first if you're not sure you can do them, or at least do enough to find out if you can or can't.
So I thought I'd better try or I'll do a ton of work and find out I can't do people. So today's task was to have a go at Venus' face.I didn't have time to finish it properly but gave me an idea of what to do. Whether I'll use it or redo it I'm not sure but for a 1st attempt at a face I was quite happy with it. I found the thought of doing it harder than actually doing it, it's just shapes and shading like everything else just need to be more careful.
 

You all probably know what it looks like but perhaps not in detail. You can see a decent size version on wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus
I've just finished the foliage on the orange trees, not yet done the blossom, branches or anything else. As you can see from the original it has lost most of its green, although you can see some up the top where a frame had been. It made it a bit tricky to even see what was going on in places. I could have done extra shading in them but think it looks ok like this, can always add some if I decide I want to. In the end I only used the darker leaf gradients. It was about 20h of work, yeah I'm slow.
Now I've one section finished I'll copy it and use that as the master image. I'll empty out the layers on the work copy but not delete them. If you delete the layers then it's harder to work out where to put new ones in the master. Doing it this way means AD doesn't need to work so hard plus you won't accidentally do some something silly with a completed section as locking doesn't really lock. So as new bits are finished they get copied in to the master.  Plus I do a backup or two a day (and exports). I just copy it as I trust that more than the snapshot, it can't really go wrong.
I need to create a much larger blossom palette, I'll upload it, and that will probably be next unless I fancy doing something else. 
 
 

The red on the wing was the worst. I tried more gradient points and fewer and that didn't help. I tried overlaying a few blend modes that would cancel each other out but that didn't work as they didn't
So I changed the angle of the gradient from roughly horizontal to sort of follow the direction of fin shapes and that helped a little bit. Still as much banding but looked better than vertical bands.
So I kept that new gradient direction and copied the red layer above (well duh), doing a squiggly shape over it, as below, then a boolean divide and adding a blur to it (deleting of the "empty half"). Then repeated that at sort of 60 degrees to it. Lastly added a bit of grain again on the exported image.  It still has problems but they're in multiple directions which make it less obvious (at least on my screen) so I think it works OK on this.
If anyone has a better way let us know.