Hey there! I’m Jen Hood, one of the co-founders of Hoodzpah, a brand identity and type design studio based out of Southern California. Today I’m going to be working on a chapter opener illustration for a book I’m co-writing with my studio partner and twin sister Amy.

For this illustration project, I’ll be using Bézier Buddy for initial line drawing in Illustrator. I have always been Adobe Illustrator native. I love the fact that I can draw in vector and still get great brush textures with the Bézier Buddy Brush pack.

True Grit Tools & Apps Used:

• Bézier Buddy
• Adobe Illustrator

Software skill level:

If you love to sketch and have a basic knowledge of Illustrator, this one’s for you. All of the brushes mentioned are available for Adobe Illustrator and Affinity Designer.

STEP 1: SKETCHING AND INSPIRATION GATHERING

First things first, lets sketch an idea. This chapter of the book is about the challenges of  accounting for creatives so I want to open with an illustration of a person engulfed in flames of angst, analyzing profit loss statements, bank statements and bills. I got this idea based on some of the things we talk about in the book chapter this illustration will accompany. Luckily the source material gives me a lot of guidance. As a graphic designer, I often find it hard to draw without a brief. An artist with welling vision from within, I am not. I’m most creative when I have a directive, like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible (watching the man run at top speed is mesmerizing, lol).

I tend to prefer illustrations with a lot of humor, detail, and texture. This inflamed creative person with smoke billowing from behind will be perfect for the gritty brushes in TGTS’s Bézier Buddy pack.

Here’s my rough sketch and some reference images. I’m really bad at nailing a thumbnail sketch as far as sizing and composition. This thumbnail is landscape, and my final artwork will be portrait. But I’m not worried, my sketch is much more a guideline than a hard fast vision. I can adapt as I need to fit my working space. Working in Adobe Illustrator will make this easy.

For this piece, I am inspired by the illustration work of Eduard Thöny, who did a ton of editorial satire work in the early to mid 1900s that poked fun at the military, government, socialites, and bourgeois. His works are an amazing dichotomy of gestural line work, textural details, large flat color blocks, and exaggerated subjects. As a graphic designer and illustrator I love his composition and execution, which feels both graphic and artistic.

For the color, I’m taking inspiration from Bob Peak, an iconic editorial and promotional illustrator from the 1960s. His use of color is always bold, and you can usually see the texture of his tools in the final artwork. He’s not trying to hide the medium, he’s celebrating his markers and paints and leaning into the natural textures they make. Will these two style references play nicely together? We shall soon see.

STEP 2: INKING MAIN LINE WORK USING BÉZIER BUDDY

When it comes to drawing in my line work, I’ll get out my Wacom Intuos tablet to keep myself from clutching a mouse for two hours (my shoulder will thank me for this). I’ll select one of the Bézier Buddy brushes and test out how it works.

In Illustrator I can double click the brush tool icon in my left hand menu and change the fidelity settings of the brush to either auto-smooth or remain accurate to how I draw them.

After I use the brush to free draw, I’ll often click into lines and add, remove, or adjust points and bezier handles to finesse the line work. This is something you can do in Illustrator that you can’t do in Photoshop or Procreate with raster brushes. I really like this vector stroke control for lettering, icon work and illustration.

STEP 3: FILLING COLOR AND ADDING MORE DETAIL

Now that I’m happy with my outlines, let’s get start forming a color palette and adding color. I want to try and keep this illustration mainly in one tonal region, like Bob Peak did with his magentas, pinks, reds, and warm tones.

As I work on my piece, I often stray from the sketch and adapt the composition. This is why working in Adobe Illustrator is great for me. I feel like it’s so much easier to change lines, move things around, and adapt my artwork in Illustrator with individual vector assets, as opposed to working with raster brushes.  

STEP 4: REFINING COMPOSITION AND ADDING EVEN MORE DETAIL

Now it’s time to dial up the detail. I’m going to add thicker dry brushes from Bézier Buddy with tapered edges for the smoke outlines. And then thinner Bézier Buddy brushes for the little flame details and cheese puff crumbs.

I’m going to keep layering more props in the foreground to really add to the sense of stress and disarray. We’ll put in some shadowing here as well, to add even more depth, and help emphasize the flames liveliness. In fact, let’s have these hands setting the Bank Statement ablaze just a bit.

STEP 5: REVEL IN THE RESULTS

At this point, I’ve usually been motivating myself with some special “treat” for finishing the project. This is a sad but true reality of my process. I am a horse who needs a carrot. So it’s time to open a Lychee Ramune, drown some ice cream in sprinkles and Disaronno (after hours luxury), or order some Indian food from Curry Out down the street. Maybe all three?

EPILOGUE

I hope you’ve enjoyed the ups downs, dramas and traumas of this adventure in illustration. I felt like Pappy of Pappyland fame teaching you how to draw across a screen (was Pappyland just a Syracuse, NY public access TV staple?). Huge thanks to the True Grit Texture Team, who’ve helped my illustrations look more tactile, toothy, and generally cooler for almost 8 years now.

More about Hoodzpah

Website  | Instagram 

Get Bézier Buddy Here.