A faster way to draw an eye in Illustrator
3 minute read#10MinSkills:
Pro artist Bert Musketon walks through a faster, more intuitive way to draw an eye in Illustrator. Using the DynamicSketch plugin, he shows how to quickly cut away paths you don’t need, and how to combine basic shapes to create an engaging illustration.
“I love DynamicSketch. It’s a really fast way of working in Illustrator,” explains Bert, who produces everything from illustrative campaigns to visual identities. His bold style is marked by a striking attention to detail and has attracted the likes of Coca-Cola, Mazda, MTV and Nike.
In the short video walkthrough below, Bert shows how to use the DynamicSketch Illustrator plugin to draw an eye. He covers the process from how to make the initial eye shape, to how to quickly draw eyelashes and eyebrows, using just some basic shapes and a few vector sketching tricks.
The best news? You can apply the time-saving techniques covered here to speed up the creative process on any vector illustration…
A quicker way to sketch and edit in Illustrator
As Bert shows, DynamicSketch can be a more efficient alternative to the Pencil tool during your initial sketching process – making it faster and easier to draw in Illustrator. Tools like Repeat Sketch Mode, for example, let you sketch repeatedly until you get the result you want (DynamicSketch averages out your stroke until you’re happy).
And it’s easy to refine your work. You can sketch over parts of any path or shape; or remove unwanted parts of a path with a quick gesture of your mouse. “The beauty of DynamicSketch for me is you can cut away the paths you don’t need by holding down the Shift key,” agrees Bert.
Meanwhile, intelligent joining automatically joins intersecting paths – letting you quickly create shapes – and instant circle functionality gives you perfect circles simply by sketching in a circular motion.
Get creative with #10MinSkills
These quick tips for drawing more intuitively in Illustrator are all part of our #10MinSkills campaign. We're challenging you to set aside just 10 minutes every day to learn a new vector-based skill – and to help, we’ve collaborated with some of the industry’s most exciting creatives to share their best time-saving techniques. You'll find them all in the #10MinSkills section of our blog.
Here's how it works: by repeating each technique for 10 minutes every day, you’ll quickly establish handy new habits that will speed up your workflow, helping you work more efficiently and freeing up more time for the fun part: being creative.
Be a better designer
Why are new skills so important? Well, because thanks to services like Instagram, anyone can be a designer at the touch of a button. That means it’s more important that ever for professional creatives to know their tools.
But software develops faster than our habits, and few of us harness the full power available at our finger tips.
We want to help change that with #10MinSkills. We'll be adding more tips, tricks and techniques to the blog over the coming weeks, so bookmark this section in your design resources and make sure you check back regularly.
