This Little Piggie Went Digital

Today I have a story to share, a tale of how this little piggy went digital!

Almost all of my artwork starts out as hand-drawn then is turned digital.  I use a few very simple methods to create digital artwork, but mostly stick with 2 programs Inkscape and Illustrator.  I prefer Inkscape, because it is less complicated, there are few effects with it, it is pretty straight forward.  Illustrator on the other hand has a lot of effects (many of which I am still learning) and is industry-compatible, which means after I draw with it, the work becomes easy for a professional end used to use, as you can see here in this animated short for Clevitz!
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utP2QIq7pPI&feature=plcp


After you view the video, stop by and show some "like" to Ccleavitz on facebook, here :)  They are a really fun company,

Now, back to our story.  I did not always turn my work digital, in the early days, I offered hand-drawn only, something like this piece created for a friend and art collector in Huntington Beach, CA

She loved her drawing so much she wanted it on "things", so we uploaded it to Cafe Press, where I still have a small shop (you can find it here), but the colors did not "print' as well as they looked.  This led me to the journey of "going digital", my first attempt were hand-drawn to scanned to colored in Paint...some were okay, some, well...let's just say painting in paint is not easy for me.  Here are some examples of Paint work-

While I did get better, there was one glaring problem....the backgrounds.  Because the computer saw the scan of the drawing as one large "piece" everything had a solid colored background (in the above examples, white).

One day, by total chance I was playing with an old Publisher program on my computer, just making things with shapes, when it hit me I could put the shapes together (like early drawing lessons, remember everything is a shape) and create them On the computer, the computer saw the objects as shapes, this solved my background dilemma, but the drawings were not very...well...they were cold.  While many lovely artworks are created this way, my work was missing the something that makes it mine...see here are some examples of what I created with the Publisher tools

By this time I was on Zazzle, which was still a fairly new company at the time with only a handful of illustrators and designers, a small enough community where I could share my woes and as for help.  Many people suggested Illustrator, which would have been great, but way beyond my means and level of understanding at the time.  One designer (and this is his shop) knew exactly what I needed and sent me a link to inkscape...now I would add a link but I have not downloaded it in a long time, and cannot recommended the best link, google Inkscape and read about it.

It had just the tools I needed!  I could scan my work, trace over it with the pencil and add colors, rich page-saturating colors!

Thus how Piggie became digital!

Over time I have changed and modified techniques, added a digital tablet to draw directly on (and maybe save a little paper), I have learned do draw some things straight-from-mouse (no pencil involved) and I am just now starting to play with the tools and effects Illustrator allows.

Quiet a journey for a Piggie, and Me!  I still get nervous sharing my work, and probably always will a little.  Some pieces I love just because they exist, others I hope YOU will love and comment on or buy.  Like all artwork it is not as much the tools as the journey to the item "becoming" what it is meant to be.

I hope you enjoyed learning a little about how I got here...now enjoy this parrot, I drew him a while and have been meaning to make him digital...maybe someday.

Have a lovely day, and thank you so much for...well...everything!

Tricia