How to create a vector woodcut portrait

I've been experimenting with creating vector woodcut portraits, which is a bit of a nuisance. I knew it was possible in programs for pixel pushers, but I wanted to see if it could be done in a vector drawing program. Of course I used my favorite Affinity Designer for this. It is Microsoft's developer award winner of 2018! Many things to consider when constructing such drawings. Still a tad confusing at this point. After approximately four trials and errors I arrived at this level of design complexity. I used my vector portrait of Abe Lincoln (its exported png of course) as the image for this test. The images were duplicated several times and to each a different 'Threshold' setting was applied, which exposes more or less of the original image. After applying these values, the images must be Rasterized in order for this woodcut effect technique to work properly.

The image Threshold values are
indicated in the Layers panel

Below you see various versions of the portrait with layers turned on or off. Click on the portrait to see the different versions in Google's lightbox for better comparison. For those seriously interested in mastering this technique, I would urge them to study this article all the way to the end; Affinity Designer has so many options and each of them can add to the quality of the artwork. The appropriate options for this particular technique are all described here.

Abe Lincoln vector woodcut portrait
with all layers visible

In the Layers panel all layers are marked
visible which results in the image above

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The portrait with the zero degrees Curves turned off

This is what you see in the Layers panel
with the 0 degrees Curves turned off

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The portrait with 0 and 30 degrees turned off

This is what you see in the Layers panel
with the 0 and 30 degrees Curves turned off

If you do exactly what it says below in Affinity Designer, you should get a proper result. For this portrait I created 6 different sets of sine lines that mask the image and rotated them 15 degrees relative to the previous one, starting a zero degrees. The sine stroke width was as thick as the space between the strokes. The image size is 1000 x 1000 pixels.

Working method:

1. Create a sine line, using snap to grid and standard grid lay-out
2. Duplicate it until entire page is covered 
3. Select all lines and ‘Expand Stroke’ 
4. Combine all expanded strokes – after which they will show as a single ‘Curve’ in the Layers panel 
5. Duplicate a number times of your choice 
6. Rotate each of them to different angles, making sure they cover entire page – you have to enlarge them until they do 
7. Import an image 
8. Duplicate it to the same number of combined strokes / Curves that you duplicated in step 5 
9. Apply a different ‘Threshold’ level to the original image and duplicates 
10. 'Rasterize' all images 
11. Drag each image inside a curve so that the Curve serves as a mask 
12. Make sure none of the Curves has a fill or stroke width assigned 

The 0 degree sine lines Expanded Strokes
that were combined, given an outline for visibility.
Note: The final result should have no outline or fill
assigned to any of the Curves!

This is what shows in the Layers panel
when only the 0 degree Curves are visible,
that have the above settings applied (temporarily)

Remarks:

• The initially drawn wavy sine line is duplicated to cover the entire page, then Expanded Stroke (under Layers in the menu bar) was applied, after which they were Combined which results in a single Curve in the Layers panel
• The rotated Curves must be enlarged to cover the entire page
• The Curves, as described in the previous point, were duplicated and rotated in increments of 15 degrees
• The combined strokes shown as Curves will show up over the images. Hit the Magnifier Zoom tool to see the result without the Curves overlaying them 
• Each Curve containing the rasterized image can be manipulated in several ways – opacity, type of filter
• I gave the Curves a 3% Gaussian blur to make the portrait more realistic, also selecting Scale with Object, hence the fx shown in the Layers panel. This is a function not present in Illustrator or CorelDRAW. It opens up a world of possibilities the competition is incapable of
• The Rectangle shown in the Layers panel can be switched on or off and given any desired colour fill. The document itself was given a transparent background
• I started this portrait with wavy sine lines, but any shape of curve could of course work
• The rotation angle of the duplicated Curves is in the names of the layers; I used increments of 15 degrees, but also here different angles could give the desired result
• When a satisfying construction of Curves is found, probably any image could be used to turn into a woodcut portrait or drawing
• This was a first experiment for this type of drawing, when more effective constructions of the Curves are found I may update this blog entry

Improved result
 
Some further improvements applied to make it look more woodcut like - is as in the image below:

Improved result of vector woodcut portrait

This was done by editing the original image that is on top of all layers, as shown in the Layer panel below to 54% Opacity and using the Add filter. The values are displayed inside the red rectangle.

Layer settings for best result

The idea is to simply stop at nothing to achieve the desired effect. 

A Great Tip!

If you click on one of the Curves in the Layer panel, that basically are the containers of the rasterized images, and then select Lock Children in the Interactive menu bar below the Main menu bar, you can move, resize or rotate the Curve container while its children - the rasterized image - remain in place, do not resize or rotate while you are editing the container Curves. This allows you to alter the effect of the Curves containing the rasterized image in the portrait, dramatically changing its appearance instantly without any hustle, allowing you to make the image look exactly the way you want.

The beauty of Affinity Designer is that 99% of all actions can be undone or re-done. It is non-destructive and parametric and has a huge number of undo levels (set to 1024 standard). It also has a history panel that allows you to change any action at any time. These functions (among a great number of others) really set Affinity Designer apart from its competition - qualities that graphic artists most definitely appreciate.



Final result

And here's what Abe Lincoln's vector woodcut portrait may look like when framed after some more tinkering was applied - background fill with 100% noise and a 36% opaque rectangular overlay with 100% noise and a Glow filter. The frame was drawn in 3D in Rhinoceros:

And here's an other one. Monsieur Voltaire. In this one I did not rasterize the images, which allowed me to experiment with even more parameters - Threshold, fx and rotation angle of the Curves masking the images.

When using the above mentioned settings, it allows endless tinkering that often results in very different results of the same subject in this type of portraits. Affinity Designers parametric qualities make it possible.

Another magnificent function

When clicking an image in the Layer panel that is contained inside a Curve (or not) a button appears in the Interactive Menu Bar that read 'Change Image'. Clicking this button does exactly that; it will open a dialogue box that allows the user to choose another image that will replace the original one, keeping the centers of the original and replacing image aligned. If the image are roughly similarly sized, this means that in the case of creating woodcut portraits or other types of artwork, the existing Curves can be used as a template in which different images can be placed! An absolutely brilliant option of Affinity Designer.

Abe Lincoln vector portrait

I have made a few portraits and paintings in photo editors, which process bitmaps, i.e. pixels. The problem with those is that I was basically stuck with one size - the original pixel measurements. Enlarging bitmap images causes them to lose crispness; they become blurry and jagged. Vector images don't cause such a problem, because the lines, shapes and colours (gradients) are expressed in formulas. Enlarging the image simply is a re-calculation of the original as a result of which the image retains its sharpness and detail. Up to recently I was restricted to use CorelDRAW, which lacks functionality to create a proper realistic portrait, unless one is prepared to use the mesh fill tool. Which I wasn't. Working with this particular tool is a horrendously tedious and time consuming process that didn't appeal to me at all.

And then I encountered Affinity Designer, a vector drawing program that has all the goodies to create vector portraits without having to spend huge parts of ones life with mesh colouring. When creating custom brushes, the program allows to 'paint' with vectors. In addition it has magnificent control over areas and lines (strokes) that are necessary to draw when making portraits - gradient colours, gradient transparency and blurring of the edges. Inkscape also has this type of functionality, but its user interface I find difficult to get familiar with. The stylish Affinity Designer UI is simple to use for artists that have experience in working with Illustrator or CorelDRAW, because of its similarity to their interfaces. In fact, less clicks are required to achieve the same in Affinity Designer than in Corel's and Adobe's vector drawing programs. And - best of all - Affinity Designer costs a very user friendly 54 Euro.... No wretched subscription model while three free upgrades included. What more can starving graphic artists wish for?

Actually, I considered dropping Windows some time ago, because I thought I had found all alternative Linux programs to do the graphic art I could do in Windows. But then I encountered the Affinity Designer and Photo, which made me decide to stick with Redmond's not always stable (cough) operating system. This first attempt at creating portraits in a vector drawing program - Affinity Designer - makes photo editors redundant, as well as the tedious and time consuming mesh-fill tools in vector drawing programs such as CorelDRAW and Illustrator. Affinity Designer, like Inkscape offers the possibility to blur vector shapes, which is a quick way to create the gradient coloured shapes to which gradient fills can be added. These are very effective functions to create realistic vector portraits, which allow to rescale to any desired size, without losing detail and unwanted blurring and jagged border shapes in unwanted spaces. Designer's competition is already now lagging behind, eventhough Designer is a relatively new program. Corel is too buggy, Illustrator too expensive and Inkscape's UI requires a type of intuition that I don't have.

I could fill a lengthy blog entry with the advantages I found in Affinity Designer compared to its competition, and I may do that in future, but not now. After a brief test in which I explored the techniques that I thought I would need to create a realistic vector portrait, I looked for a subject for a portrait that would be suited for my first vector portrait attempt. I remembered I did a test of a new, synthetic type of paper when I was still airbrushing for which I used creepy prez Abraham Lincoln. I thought I would make a portrait of him again in vectors, so that I could compare the results. And low and behold: the vector program made my airbrush skills totally redundant...(except for its therapeutic usefulness perhaps). The only problem is that you have to get your artwork printed when you want to hang your portrait on a wall, which is a rather costly affair, although A3 printers are becoming relatively affordable. Their ink cartridges on the other hand remain ungainly expensive. Other than that, Affinity Designer absolutely blew me away with respect to its ease of use and most magnificent functionality. Below is the result - an oversight of the various stages and the portrait so far.

After not having touched it for months
I did some more detailing this portrait

After having had a tip at the Affinity forum

the colouring of the jacket has improved a lot.

Outline view showing vector shapes and lines
as they were used in the image above this one.

Colour test

Head is close to completion. I plan to

also draw the neck and his costume in

the near foreseeable future. Stay tuned....

These are the various stages of the portrait.
Click the images to see larger versions of them.

There still are numerous mistakes in this portrait, but they won't be repeated in future projects. Visually the portrait appears to be okay, so I'll settle for this and consider it to be part of an unavoidable learning curve. While drawing I continued to run into new possibilities and questions I had with regards to Designer's functionality were promptly answered in the Affinity forum. The portrait was drawn in a beta version after I had a horrendous crash with the previous versions of Designer and Photo. I guess this is all part of the early stages of the development process in which Affinity currently finds itself. The beta version gave no problems at all, which raises my expectations for their next upgrade. In their forum they announced its change list, which is huge; it most likely will make Designer even more effective than it already is now.


A few words on digital art

I've noticed that many artists and art lovers find that digital art is not real art or inferior to analogue methods of creating art at best. I have done a lot of airbrushing in the past, which also isn't considered to be real art by fans of the hairy brush artists and to such people, digital art is even worse than airbrush. In all honesty, I must admit that I couldn't care less what people think about it. What matters to me is that I find the level of control digital means offer, are beyond anything other techniques do. I'm not a control freak at all, except when creating realistic portraits. I always aim to bring out the essence of the people in my portraits, making changes that aren't present in the photographs that I use as reference material, and for now digital methods suit me best to achieve such matters.

I like the tinkering to get things right, without having to go through a lot of time and effort to revert to a previous state (after having made a mistake) and work from there have an other go to express what is in my mind's eye. Affinity Designer is over 90% parametric, which means that the original - any stage of the drawing I created - remains untouched if I don't touch it. Modifications, additions and subtractions are simply stored in different layers on top of the original, which theoretically allows to create and endless number of changes. That is also possible to do in traditional painting with brushes or in airbrush of course, but it simply takes a lot more time and effort. In addition, Affinity's History Panel allows to make changes in any stage of the project, while it offers a 1000 (!) undo actions.

With a vector drawing program like Designer I don't need to waste time and effort; I can make any change I want immediately and accurately. Outside critiquing art, those that dislike digital art, love all the handy digital gadgetry they use on a daily basis while being dependent on computers, tablets, smart phones, smart household applications, the internet and cloud storage etc., but when it comes to art, they suddenly have an opinion that is incongruous with the rest of their largely digital life. In most cases just because they've heard other people, who they consider to be influential, say that digital art creation isn't 'real art' and therefore choose to remain in denial, since everyone else who is similarly conditioned, does that too. To me, for the reasons mentioned here, digital art actually is art. Perhaps in 50 years from now people will barely know what analogue painting and airbrushing is, because all artists have gone digital. So digital artists may be nothing more or less than a poorly understood avant garde group of creative souls.