Vector Drawing Practice

A vector drawing consists of points, lines, polygons, and curves to create a computer image. One of the leading vector drawing programs is Adobe Illustrator, but for my first vector drawing attempt, I decided to use a program that I am more familiar with: Photoshop.

Suzi provided me a drawing she had sketched and I used the under drawing as a guide for the Photoshop pen tool. The pen tool in Photoshop is horrifically unintuitive, but very powerful under the right hands. However, no guide on this planet will help you master it; the only way of getting the hang of using the pen tool is by creating drawings and shapes using it yourself. It's a little helpful to memorize the shortcuts pertaining to anchor points.

I followed a useful tutorial provided by Beavotron from the Penny-Arcade forums. I recommend watching that once or twice to get the feel for this vector drawing process. She uses the pen tool in Photoshop, however I recommend eventually getting used to using Illustrator, since it seems to be built for the sole purpose of doing vector drawings.

Anyway, here is the original drawing and the final product. Took me about 6-8 hours to complete.