Drawing with circles can be very effective.
If you look at this illustration, you probably
go "aww, so cute", but this is actually all round shapes, all perfect circles.
I didn't
use anything else.
Just the circle tool and obviously combining it with gradients and
Shape Builder.
So let me just try to quickly mock up the head, obviously it would take
quite long to do the whole thing, but if I start with a brand new illustration, let's
see how I would do this.
Start with a circle, which is going to be the head.
Ok, then I
select the Direct Selection Tool, select these 2 points, the left and the right points and
with that using the arrows on the keyboard I can shift it around slightly.
So we can
already get slightly different shape here and then I can also select these handle points
and I can round them out a bit more.
So I started with a circle and you can say I'm
cheating, but I'm making changes to the circle because I needed a slightly different shape.
But then if we look at the example we had here, we need to have also the eyes and the
ears.
Now the ears are quite simple, they are almost perfect circles, so I can just
draw a circle up there and then I can draw another one quickly on top of it.
Before I go any further at this point I would already set up the colours just so we can
see what is going on here.
I'm going to use a gradient on the fill colour, so I will use the gradient panel and while
this Fill colour is selected I click on that and I change it to Radial Gradient.
I'm going to go a little bit fast so you might find it difficult
to follow.
So there is our gradient.
I'm going to change the colour to a brighter grey, something like that and then now we
can play around with the centre point.
Maybe increase out something like that.
See what I told you about lighting, this almost looks like 3d immediately, just by applying
the gradient.
Shadows around it and highlight in the middle.
I select these 2 shapes and move it behind the head, and I'm going to use the same gradient
for the ear, but I'm going to go into it and change it to a darker gradient.
I will turn this one and that colour also to a darker value, something like this.
Then I can select this other shape and using the Eyedropper I can pick the same colour
already and there one of the ears is ready.
We can distort it slightly if we want and then using the Reflect Tool we can already
reflect this onto the other side.
The shortcut was Alt+Shift to make sure it duplicates and keeps it straight.
Let's draw quickly the patch behind the eye, again it can be the same shape, but now again
I will use the Direct Selection Tool and I shift these points around slightly, and you
can even switch to the Pencil Tool, and look at that: with the Pencil Tool I can draw over
the edges slightly and I could create a much more customised shape for the eye.
Then I will draw the other circle on top of that, which is going to be rim, so I just
come back here, we need that one there.
Then we need to have another circle.
Another useful shortcut is Cmd/Ctrl+C, Cmd/Ctrl+F is going to copy and paste exactly in the
same position.
I use the Eyedropper to pick the same colour from the head and then I can use the same
technique and create the iris.
So for the iris I'm going to again change my gradient and I'm going to use from the
outside a little bit darker blue, so I'm just going to switch to colours and a darker blue,
and inside I will make it brighter blue, like that and let's make it a little bit cross-eyed.
That always makes things more cute.
If we have it like that and then we add the pupil, and I'm going to use again the same
colour, or maybe for that we can use completely black, like that.
This won't be realistic without the reflection, you always have to have a highlight, a point
of the brightest detail, where light gets reflected.
I'm going to add that in there, which immediately makes it more lively.
What I will do now is I select everything in the background, group them together and
I lock them: Cmd/Ctrl+2 is the shortcut for locking.
That means I cannot select anything in the background now, so I select everything that's
made up the eye, group it together (Cmd/Ctrl+G) and again use the centre point here, Alt+Shift
and drag it onto the other side.
Now at this point if you feel like it's too close you can always select the eye and use
the arrows on the keyboard to move it around.
Let's say move it 3 points to the left, 3 points to the right.
So we are getting there.
Now we need the nose.
The nose is slightly more tricky but again, I'm using the circle, staying true to what
I said.
Then I'm going to pick that same colour up there, then I use the Direct Selection Tool
and just move it down slightly.
And now the shape created from that.
Then comes the mouth.
So I'm going to draw another circle, duplicate this (Alt).
Using the Shape Builder holding down the Alt/option key you draw over the parts you don't need
and you immediately have the shape that we wanted to create here.
You can move this behind the nose, something llike that.
And now we just need to reflect it again.
So using the same method that we did before: Alt+Shift+ reflect and we have the mouth as
well in place.
After this it's really all about just continuing the same methods and every detail here, even
that little detail on the top.
Using the same method, just to show you very quickly I can draw a circle once again, use
the same colour from here, Alt/Optinon+click and draw and then select these two, Alt/Option+draw
over and we have one of those hair details.
We can also delete using the Eraser Tool we can delete the parts that you don't need.
So there's one and Alt+click and then rotate to duplicate.
So I think my point is proven with this, that anything can be created from simple shapes.
So the whole thing that I'm trying to explain here is that you don't actually have to have
a free hand-drawing skill in Illustrator.
It's great to have it, but if you have a reference image, you most likely will be able to recreate
it by using shapes or combinations of the tools that I showed you today.