Vector painting of a jaguar

 

This is a vector portrait of a crouching jaguar, created in VectorStyler and Affinity Designer. At this time - March 2024 - it still is a work in progress. VectorStyler I used to create the majority of the spots, using the Spikes shapes effect, which shapes the outline of an object into a spiky line, that can be controlled. In Affinity Designer I did the composition and tweaking. Vector objects can be copied and pasted between the two programs, which is a time saver, since Vector Styler has a ton of tools that are not incorporated in the programs of the competition.

Everything mentioned above was drawn with the mouse. The final touches - the hair strands - will have to be drawn and I plan to do it with my old Huion 620 Pro drawing tablet (in vectors too), because I intend to keep this image a 100% vector drawing. The oldest stage is at the bottom, the newest on top. Click on an image to see a larger version of it in Google's Lightbox. In there you can also scroll through the stages on a PC. I used a ton of tricks to create the desired effect. In a multi layer drawing as this one, that contains a large amount of objects, it is best to use the Spit Screen View in Affinity Designer to select and / or reshape objects to save a huge amount of time. This paragraph also is in the bottom section of this blog entry. Most objects are given gradient fills, transparency, layer effects and Gaussian blurs to avoid the proverbial had edges typical for vector drawing programs. This makes images drawn in such a way appear to be very unrealistic.

Please check in every now and then to see the progress of this drawing.

Vector outline

The vector outline view shows the contours of objects and strokes - what actually is drawn - without fills and effects applied. Below this paragraph is the vector outline view from the stage before adding the fur structure that would dominantly hide parts of other objects, since it literally shows a plethora of objects. At this stage the outline view without the many strokes of hair still gives a rough idea how the drawing was set up. It also presents an idea of how many objects (called Layers in Affinity Designer) were drawn to achieve the desired result, bearing in mind that many objects are stacked on top of each other (most with a different effect or blend), which does not show in the outline view. Drawing the jaguar in vector instead of pixels, allows to resize the image to any scale without loss of quality.

Multiple object / layer selection in Split Screen View

When a drawing contains hundreds or thousands of objects / layers, selecting a particular one is difficult. The only effective solution to this problem is to work with a Split Screen View in Affinity Designer, which makes selecting less cumbersome, especially when the drawing contains many nested (objects within objects to various levels) layers. The image below shows what this looks like.

Jaguar in a virtual 3D frame

I often place my vector 2D images in a virtual 3D frame to see what it would look like, using the Plasticity 3D program to draw the frame, to see if the placement of the composition is off, before having it giclée printed, which is a special fine art way of printing with a high resolution (up to 6800 dpi and a 100 year of quality preservation). If cropping and / or alignment isn't done meticulously, any artwork can be ruined or subconsciously look strange. The image below shows the as of now not yet final stage of March 12 2024.

The vector painting
in a virtual 3D frame

Continuing jaguar illustration in Affinity Designer 2

 

Crashes, crashes, crashes!
After having too many crashes and freezes in the high potential VectorStyler with the jaguar illustration I continued it in the newly released Affinity Designer 2 to test out this new release with more intensity. I crashed three times in Designer 2, but the first time I was offered to open a backup file that did not appear to have lost too many data. The second time no such option was presented. Restarting after the third crash, offered to load a recovery file, but a lot of work was lost. Upon re-opening the document crashed in the same way and it was not possible to save whatever was newly drawn.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that already in this relatively early stage - stage 1 - there are a ton of objects, to all of which several effects were applied. As mentioned in the previous blog entries, my computer is from before the Jurassic era, which may also be part of the crash problem. But probably there is also something not right with the software.

Whatever may be the case, here is the continuation of the art I started in VectorStyler. I exported the file as an .svg and opened it in Affinity Designer to take it from there. In the imported .svg, all shape blurring was removed, but some of the ripple distortion had remained in tact. I was relieved, because this meant that I only had to make a few minor adjustments.

First experience in making a complex vector drawing in Designer 2
Drawing in Affinity Designer 2 doesn't feel much different from the previous versions - I installed all the previous Beta versions - apart from the coloured icons in the toolbar, the rearranged functions in the fx dialog box and the changed layout of the Layers panel, as I've noticed so far. From the tools added to version 2, I only used the 4 point distortion, which at times needs a refresh by zooming in and out again and  and the shape builder tool to adjust a spot. A vector ripple distortion tool like in VectorStyler would have been useful to apply to the spots in the fur in this drawing; in Affinity Designer I had to apply the distortions manually with the pen and node tools. 

As usual the newest stage will be placed on top and the oldest one at the bottom. On a PC or Mac, click on an image and scroll through the images using the mouse wheel and quickly shift through the images to see the difference between the various stages. Additional comments below the image captions.

Stage 10 - added the texture base. Somehow the old
machine did not crash after drawing the previous stage.

The jag's tail was reworked, its left eye was made slightly bigger and the base for the fur texture was added (experimenting with this, because it must be vector only). No 'vector' brushes, no symbols and no patterns were used, because they are not real vectors, which are among the sadly still missing functions in Affinity Designer version 2. My outdated machine is barely able to keep up, but surprisingly did not crash during this stage. Exporting the file to .png however took an eternity. The original size of the drawing is: 3735 x 2270 pixel, because I have vague plans to have this drawing hi-res giclée printed on aluminium covered with a high quality lacker layer. The image placed on this site is smaller and therefore contains less detail than the original.

Stage 9 - tedious face fur detail drawing.

Crashed only once (....)

Although weary of crashes, began drawing the fur texture in the face of the jag, for which I used a number of tricks that I may explain in a separate blog entry somewhere in the future. No vector brushes were used whatsoever, because these are bitmaps drawn along a vector stroke, so no real vectors. The new X-ray view in Affinity Designer is quite useful to select objects in a drawing that contains many objects. This drawing is 100% vector. The old machine is behaving above expectation and I crashed only one time....

Started to draw the face fur texture detail - stage 9

This is the vector outline view of the image right above this one.

Did some work on the reflections on the water surface
in this 8th stage. No crashes fortunately this round.

I could not leave the project alone, so I cautiously proceeded., hoping the crashing would not occur. After having received a tip from Stuart RC on the affinity forum to use the pencil tool for certain aspects of the image, I was able to speed up the drawing process considerably. Never used the tool before, so I guess I underestimated its usefulness. Also did detail the jag's hair in the ear areas.

7th stage - an other crash in Designer 2. I was given an option
to open a recovery file, but much data was lost. To make things
worse, the crashing continued after opening the recovery files.

Yet an other crash in Affinity Designer 2 when editing the water surface of the river and foliage in the background. I have become careful and save the file after drawing every new object; still more data than that was lost. In spite of all these annoyances, I got the base of the water and background done. A bug I detected was that when area objects that were given a Gaussian blur overlap a weird line displays in the contour of the overlapped object.

Detailing of spots and whiskers - sixth stage

So far so good; no crashes in Affinity Designer 2 anymore. Made several minor changes to the various shapes, like changing the contours and colour adjustment. I also added the whiskers with adjusted stroke properties and mild Gaussian blur. Pussycat is starting to come alive on its way to kill.

Coming along nicely without crashing in fifth stage.

The biggest pain  - drawing all the spots without having a ripple distortion available - is now behind me. What is left is drawing of shadows' lighter areas and accents and tweaking them. Plus the reflections and colouring of the water ripples of course. In reality - to be safe - I have so far saved 17 files of this image, including those drawn in VectorStyler before switching to Affinity Designer. The Aomei on the fly backup system will hopefully prevent data loss.

Continuing to spotify and balance the colours in fourth stage.

The quality of portraits is defined by their appeal, which is determined by the intensity and tone of its accents. Subtle changes can impact the impression that an observer gets in a way that is disproportional to the extent of the change. They have to be balanced in combination with the tweaks of their environment. Trying to do this properly, so that the cat comes alive, so that its murderous mindset becomes tangible.

Affinity Designer version 2 crashed for the second time in
this third stage. Complexity apparently is difficult
to process for my struggling old machine

The abundance of spots have a shedload of nodes. I sometimes think that today we are still in the stone age of computing, in spite of what manufacturers want us to believe. At least that would probably be what people from a far away future think of man's current achievements in this field. I was not presented with the option to re-open a backup file this time, so I guess I have to see what happens from here on with working in this 100% vector image. Keeping my fingers crossed is the only option I have until my new, more powerful rig arrives.

Many more spots to go - stage 2

I think I didn't miss a spot yet ....

Imagine, in the jag's DNA code is included each and every coordinate of every single hair, its colour, length and type. It makes drawing a vector image of the big cat a walk in the park by comparison, however tedious drawing may be. For the final stages I will have to use my Huion tablet to draw the (dark, medium and light) hairs to make the jag's fur look more realistic.

First stage after the transfer from VectorStyler.
Strewing spots all over the hunting feline.

The jag's image, drawn in VectorStyler, still looks weird in this stage, similar to the early stages of almost anything else, which hints at the fact that from weirdness often coherent appearance comes. With so few objects or shapes drawn, it is hard to properly balance anything. So, I progress as fast as possible to leave this initial stage behind me.

Vector butterfly

 

This was an exercise to draw organic shapes in Affinity Designer. To the curves and strokes gradient colours, opacity and fx were applied. Vector drawing programs are commonly known to produce hard edges, but Affinity Designer is quite well capable of the opposite, which allows to draw realistic vector shapes, that resemble imagery that is created in pixel editing programs, while being re-scalable to any size without loss of quality. Vector images are also easily edited afterwards, easier than pixel art in any event, because each curve and stroke is a separate, editable object.

Affinity Designer allows object edges to be anywhere between hard and soft and even is capable of  creating objects that have a varied level of softness in their edges, that I haven't been able to achieve so effectively and fast in the programs of the competition, while still being able to swiftly edit the blurred edge properties afterwards. The varied level blurring is done by multi-level clipping, gradient opacity and Gaussian blurring effect. Below on top you see the rendered image and below that the vector outline view. Click the images to see them in Google's Lightbox.

The rendered view

The vector outline view

Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW offer the Mesh Fill function with which similar looking effects can be achieved. But that technique is nothing but replacing a cluster of pixels of the same colour with a small vector area of one particular colour, that can be manipulated somewhat. Depending on the complexity of the object that is drawn, using this method can require a shedload of work, because all colours involved (in the reference image) have to be mis en place (selected and made available in a colour ribbon before drawing even starts), and each change in color has to be determined to be replaced by a vector area. Affinity Designer allows to use curves and / or strokes that can be clipped in more levels, which makes it easy to edit areas at a later point in time, which is a hell of a chore in Mesh Fill images, even when parts of objects are drawn separately.

In addition Affinity Designer allows to define transparent areas that are adjacent or inside to the colour filled ones or inside them, with either sharp or blurred edges (which are also editable afterwards). So, illustrators and designers that must or want to make images that include organic shapes, are absolutely better served by Affinity Designer. Especially artists that don't have to worry about legacy data from programs of the competition, will find that Designer suits their requirements excellently. 

Warrior horse

In the series of vector paintings that I am in the process of creating, I thought I couldn't make one  that didn't include a horse, since the average horse is a better person than the average person. I've no clue yet where this is going, so it may be worthwhile to drop in every now and then to see what has changed, should you be curious. So, while I horse about, do whatever suits you. At his point - July 30 2021 - this vector painting is a work in progress. Drawn in Affinity Designer of course. Not a single pixel included, because I don't use Designer's pixel persona. I wouldn't call myself a vector purist, but rather some sort of maniac with a cause, who has an evidenced aversion of creating pixel art.

The warrior part in this blog entry's title may give away what I envisioned this image to be(come) around the time I started the drawing. But few things in life are certain in this life. In fact, probably nothing is and I'm not even sure about that. I guess Heisenberg guessed quite accurately when he invented his renown principle. Therefore, enjoy things while you can, preferably without becoming a hedonistic headcase.

As usual the image progress order that you see below is from the bottom to the top. I left out the first two stages that didn't contain anything worth publishing. Below the third stage you see a vector outline view of the most recent stage of the image, if I don't forget to update it. But as I mentioned above: you never know. Oh, and by the way, for those interested, in the update paragraph in the previous blog entry some of the techniques are described that I use to create drawings like this one. So far my uncommon working methods haven't crashed Affinity Designer beyond the point of repair. Although my old computer has a hard time keeping up, the software has behaved surprisingly well.

Artists looking for versatile, demolition proof vector software to make artistic complex doodles, should consider giving Affinity Designer a try. I'm on the Redmond OS; I don't know about the Big Fruit systems. It has a long trial period (90 days) and for one sixth (50 Euro) of the annual subscription fee of Adobe Illustrator, purchasers of the Affinity program, own it for life after they parted with just a one time payment. This is especially interesting for newbie artists that don't have to worry about editing legacy files (created in AI or other software) and build their entire portfolio in Affinity Designer or for graphic veterans that are fed up with Adobe's rip off deal.

Square cut out of the horse August 1 2021

Stage 5 July 30 2021

Stage 4 July 29 2021

Stage 3 July 29 2021

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Vector outline view of the most recent stage

Vector outline view stage 5

View to a kill - Jaguar vs caiman vector drawing

 

Recently I discovered a stunning photograph shot by Justin Black, showing a view to a kill; a jaguar catching a caiman in the tropical rainforest of the Amazon. This predator hunt predator moment has a vigorous impact on those looking at the image (this would be a normal person's reaction anyway). Being a witness of a kill, has the tendency to cause neurons to fire a barrage of impulses, generating gamma brainwave patterns in response to perceiving the brutal event, especially when watching the motions in a video that accompanies the photo on the National Geographic website. Such things did occur within my upstairs department, after which I felt compelled to make a vector drawing of it. At the time of the most recent update - January 24 2021, it is still a work in progress, but at this stage it is already visible where it is going. As usual, I created this vector art in Affinity Designer, Serif's magnificent vector drawing program, that can be purchased for just 50 Euro, a one time fee without the rip off recurring subscription payments.

Like I usually do, I changed some features of the image, to enhance its optical affect. I altered some of the jag's facial traits (made its eyes look more leopard like) to make that part of the drawing easier on the eye and will arrange the background in such a way that it does not interfere with the battle of the beasts. Also I placed the jag's tail on the opposite side of its body relative to how it was in the photo to make the composition more balanced. I am still undecided about the cut out format; the photograph is taller, showing more of the scene, but I assume this matter will sort itself out in time or I could simply make more than one version of this work. For the moment I chose a panoramic lay-out, because I may use it as a header image in my website. There you find my portfolio that is distinguished from most vector art collections, by the way, in that I use vector drawing programs to create mainly organic shapes, for which these types of applications are unfit as most 'experts' would say. I am also considering to make both a graphic version and a more realistic version, if I ever get around to draw the latter, which remains uncertain even in times of lockdowns that cause people to become bored senseless.

Upto now, I've exclusively used the mouse to draw (it is a slow tool, but very accurate), but at a later stage I may use my Huion 610 Pro tablet to add the jag's fur texture and perhaps some of the caiman's scales to elevate the image quality and give it a near photo realistic appearance. Before reaching that phase, I focus on establishing the base, which already has some level of detail intricacy. A thing to take into account is that at stage 12 already over 500 layers (curves or objects) have been created, a number that will rapidly increase when using a tablet. It is necessary to give key layers a name and colour code them to keep control over where I am working in Affinity Designer's Layers Panel, and it requires alertness and a logical approach to properly navigate and draw in the complex object hierarchy. When the drawing will be completed, I will add the vector outline image, from which those familiar with vector drawing will be able to get an idea of the power of the Affinity Designer program.

Click the image to see all of them in Google's lightbox, a manually operable slide show. It allows you to swiftly flick through the various stages by turning the scroll wheel of the mouse. This lightbox allows to compare the stages visually like nothing else does and quickly see the changes applied. Unfortunately this function can only be accessed on PC's, Macs or laptops and not on tablets and smart phones (as far as I am aware). Newest stage is on top, oldest at the bottom. Please check in regularly as I continue to post new stages in this article, until the image is done. Text updates will be placed below Stage 1 at the end of this blog entry. Enjoy your visit to this page and feel free to do some more browsing in my blog and if you like it, spread the word and perhaps even blog about this blog. I will of course return the favour. Have a nice day. 

Update February 18 2021

Below you see the next version, edited in RawTherapee, an absolutely brilliant open source image editor, that gives Adobe Lightroom a run for its money. In fact, in many respects it is better than the industry standard, while offered for free. Besides offering outlandishly good and easy to operate editing and batch editing functionality, it allows to catalog images, which are the same functions Lightroom has. Artists chased away by Adobe's wretched subscription model, should definitely give this excellent program a try, most of whom certainly won't be sorry for giving it a test run.

I removed the foreground drawings (the snake and the monkey), because I felt it took the focus of the main part of the image, to which I did some more vector detail editing.

I saved the drawing with history, which should make turning it in to a tutorial in the future somewhat easier. But I still have to familiarise myself with video editing. Plus, as usual, the future remains at least as unpredictable as winning lottery numbers. Which particularly applies to the future in these sinister times. 

Stage 27 - edited with RawTherapee

Stage 21 - graphic version

Stage 15

Stage 14

Stage 13

Stage 12

Stage 11

Stage 10

Stage 9

Stage 8

Stage 7

Stage 6

Stage 5

Stage 4

Stage 3

Stage 2

Stage 1

Stage 16 vector outline

Update January 31 2021

After stage 21, I think I went a little bit overboard, which probably is something many designers recognize. To stop drawing at the right moment, remains a difficult decision (for me at least). Fortunately, Affinity Designer is a non-destructive program that allows to revert to previous stages without problem; layers can be switched on and off at will and the history function allows to remove any step necessary, apart from the 1000 standard undo's. I will therefore leave the design for the time being and later focus on enhancing the textures somewhere in the future. Meanwhile I will start drawing other things.

Vin Diesel vector portrait drawn in Affinity Designer

 

This is a work in progress as of November 10 2020 that I began to create in November 9. I'm in the process of drawing a vector portrait of Vin Diesel, the ultimate cool guy in movies, probably because he's cool in real life as well. It is in the process of being created in Affinity Designer (because it's not finished yet as of November 27 2020), aiming to use as little as possible objects (curves and shapes) as possible in this complex work. Purpose for the time being is to create a graphical image that will be used in a T-shirt design. Like the previous portraits I posted in this blog, I may at some point continue to work on the drawing in the future to make it more realistic by adding textures and more detail (by adding custom made vector brushes). For T-shirt design adding too much detail basically is a waste of time. Check out my vector portraits in my webstite and in this blog. The T-shirt designs I submitted to Redbubble. Stay tuned to see updates leading towards the final product. Oldest stage at the bottom, most recent on top.

A few hints

Many shapes are made of curves - (open ended) lines drawn with the pen tool - to which I added various thicknesses, Gaussian blurs, more or less complex gradients, also for strokes, and gradient transparencies. I also applied multi-level clipping (i.e. object in object in object etc.) of objects which allows to go beyond the the complexity of standard gradient fills. Also HSL hue shifts and Brightness & Contrast effects were applied to them. For more complex shapes I drew the closed line objects and applied the same effects to them as mentioned before. In using these techniques the number of objects can be reduced and all that can be done in pixels that can be done in vectors too. In addition, contrary to bitmap images, vector images can be re-scaled to any size without loss of quality. 

Stage 14

Vector outline of portrait

Stage 13 

Stage 11 

Stage 10 

Stage 09 

Stage 08 

Stage 07 

Stage 06 

Stage 05 

Stage 04 

Stage 03 

Stage 02 

Stage 01