Digital Illustration – Momma Fox Vector

To keep up digital artworking practice, I dug up an old sketch of a fox to work from. I still really liked the shapes that the fox was made up of, so I didn’t have to tweak anything before working on it. It is a pretty static pose, but I have more kinetic compositions in the works.

This digital artworking exercise was carried out in Adobe Illustrator. I followed the same steps I usually do: begin with a sketch, trace it in Illustrator, and then deck it out with colour and textures.

I traced my sketch into basic shapes

You can see the basic shapes the figure is made of. You may not think about it consciously, but basic geometric shapes all carry some ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ associations. The triangle was used a lot in construction here. You may associate triangles with progression, instability, aggression, and unpredictability. The fox is softened by the use of semi ellipses though.

I used a good four or five vector brushes to get the analogue-like textured feel that I wanted. There are probably better brushes out there (to download) for this sort of work, but I’m making do with what I have just now.

A MESS

Above, you can see how messy the canvas got while applying textures. I used the Pathfinder tools (Unite, Intersect, Minus Front…) extensively while adding textures. I’m sure there’s a more conventional way to go about it, but it’s how I taught myself to apply such details.

The end piece!!

I’m very happy with the colours of the fox, and how well the initial sketch’s silhouette translated into this vectored artwork. I feel content to make further digital works in this graphic style. I… might even want to make a set of caniformia illustrations! AR-WOOOO!!