Digital Illustrator
Stuart Flynn – Bachelor of design – Illustration
With a BA in illustration from the University of South Australia plus 25 years as a working graphic designer, you can be confident of finding a solution to your illustration needs.
Mixed media illustration
I don’t have a particular bias in illustration style but see myself more as a technical chameleon. I have a diverse set of Photoshop, traditional and Adobe skills, and I can advise the best approach to suit your needs and budget.
Some of the more common styles I use are vector illustration in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop masking, airbrush, inking, traditional sketching & tracing and even some 3D rendering.
Illustrating just about anything you want
When combined with stock imagery and traditional painting, the only limitation is time and budget. See below for samples of my illustration work.
Photoshop and Photography
Music album artwork. Concept and design.
Photoshop illustration based on an image of the artist’s face. The idea is based on a butterfly painting that 2 ideas become one in a collaboration of music. View website
stufly – music album 2 artwork.
Concept and design of graphics using Photoshop. Website design and social marketing including Facebook, Twitter and Soundcloud. Based on the vibrant colours of the first album and artwork. The idea is to convey the fresh and modern sound of the music with a loose representation of digital eq. View website
Acrylics
A pair of acrylics – 1m each. ‘Itchy Bear’ and ‘Whirly Pool’.
The first painting was based on a canvas photocopy that I found in a gallery. I tweaked the last stages to make it more dynamic with random splashes of paint. The second painting replicates the style of the first painting, but the composition and colours are entirely original.
3D rendering and Photoshop poster design
Milfest 2000 poster design
New Years Eve Poster for Millicent’s year 2000 party – Based on the Millennium bug theme – I was given an open brief for this country event.
With a $2,000 budget, I made this idea from scratch in 3D and then finessed the detail of the facial details and background in Photoshop.
Mixed Media acrylics and pastels
Wall painting – replica
This is a personal piece of art that was loosely copied from an artwork we liked. I’m not sure how the original artist did it but I used a mixture of acrylics and chalk crayons.
Mixed Media 3D and Photoshop CD design
You’re soaking in it – CD design – bathtub idea
Chunky Custard CD – My second project after graduating. A cover band wanted a CD cover design using a custom illustration of the band to go with their album titled ‘You’re Soaking in it’. The was made in a 3D program and then Photoshop. The bathtub idea was mine once I heard the album name.
Inking versus hand-drawn illustrations
Above you can see a practical application for the inking style on a Facebook banner, and below you can see an image that has been hand-drawn, scanned and vectorised in Adobe Illustrator.
Resizing, colourising and exporting advantages of vector images
By applying both of these methods within the Adobe Illustrator application, images can be resized without loss of resolution, plus they can be more easily edited in various applications like Photoshop.
Pencil sketches
This pencil drawn illustration style is a looser style and still editable like inking but to a lesser degree.
Drawing and tracing on a lightbox
I draw in pencil, build up the image on a lightbox with multiple traces and then scan and trace with a brush tool within Adobe Illustrator. On a separate layer, I use the blob tool to do loose fills below the linework. This keeps the style of the illustration loose, plus it’s fairly easy to fill large blocks of space with little effort on the underlying colour layer.
Adobe Illustrator Inking technique
Showing the two-step process of this illustration using Adobe Illustrator. Beginning with the tracing of a photograph by using a Wacom tablet. Following this, the rough edges are removed and then the paint bucket tool is used to drop in flat colour.
Before and after retouching a portrait
Retouching experiment with face – A personal project using opposite techniques and effects. Left and right I generate an older and a younger version of this wedding photo of myself. The project took about 3 hours.
Mixing Photography with illustration
Dairy Farmer’s brochure – This brochure composite image was a combination of studio product shots with a supplied illustration provided by the client. Grass and shadows were manually added using separate layers within Adobe Photoshop.
Security guard logo
Hitman Security Services wanted their logo to incorporated a stylised image of a Dutch Sheperd dog. My idea was to replace the letter M with the shape of a Dutch Shepard head. A grungy texture that is similar to that of the font is added to blend in the text with the image. This logo illustration technique was done in Adobe Illustrator with help of clipping masks and the trace tool.
Traditional airbrush
Using the old fashioned airbrush, this is a project from my University days, just to show a bit of diversity and more organic style. I started with a super unit shape and just worked in detail from the outside in. The focus is on the eye. I used random bits of torn paper and some acetate for masking. The colour pallet was red, blue, yellow, white and black. Building these colours up over time allowed nice skin tones and glued the whole thing together.
Using colour hues to create depth
During the time of this project, we were learning about hot and cold colours in the illustration to enhance a sense of distance. You may notice the subtle changes in the hue between the foreground and background parts of the face.
Tracing a hand-drawn sketch using markers
Handdrawn using traditional marker pens. Scanned and traced in Illustrator. Fills are dropped in on the computer. This idea for done for an Award School print ad concept.
Cartooning
Concreting Logo and Website – A sketch based on combining an existing illustration and the owner’s face. The sketch was then made into a vector image using Adobe Illustrator and colourised into the brand colours of the business. Two additional versions of the logo were made to incorporate the trucks in the business. https://lizardsconcretepumping.com.au/
Mixed media digital illustration using Adobe Applications
A blend of Illustration techniques using Adobe and Poser
Complex images and gradients were drawn and combined in Adobe Illustrator. The hand was rendered using another application called 3d Poser and then the whole composite image was integrated into Photoshop. The animation was also done in AdobePhotoshop using layers. For the full website and explanation of this product visit. Extremenouns.com
