Objective

To learn advanced Illustrator drawing techniques. To practice working with Illustrator's primitives by recreating the following illustration by designer Mark Fox of Black Dog Studios:

Discussion

What unifies this illustration is the strict use of primitive shapes to create the horse (all the curves have been cut from a perfect circle). Although mechanical looking at first glance, the charm of this art lies in the creative way the horse has been simplified to its barest essential elements.

Procedure

prepping for the exercise

1. download starter file
2. launch Illustrator, file > new (cmyk), save as "horse.ai"
3. file > place "horse.psd" (place as template)
4. rename "layer 1" as "circles" (blue)
5. practice Illustrator's navigation shortcuts (download Illustrator keyboard shortcuts)

creating the art in illustrator

1. set stroke to red and fill to none, stroke weight = 8pt
2. double-click the scale tool: do not scale strokes & effects
3. draw circle (shift to constrain, option to draw from center), position
4. dupe circle (opt-drag); re-size and re-position; repeat until you have enough circles for the horse's tail
5. dupe "circles" layer, rename "tail", hide "circles" layer
6. view > outline (cmd+Y)
7. view > smart guides
8. go to the direct selection tool; then select the pen tool
9. expand layers to show sub-layers (content): restack as needed
10. add anchors where circles need to join (current circle must be on top of stacking order)
11. delete unneeded anchors
12. to join lines: select object (opt-click), move object away (this is temporary), carefully select anchor to join, move until anchor back until it snaps, marquee snapped anchors, then join (cmd+J)
13. add new layers as needed to complete the illustration
14. view > preview (cmd+Y)
15. change stroke to black
16. new layer "color"; add colored rectangles
17. select > stray anchor points, delete

grading

1. submit b&w laser proofs with your name on it for grading
2. file graded proof in your 3-ring binder for individual review