Practical Art class for illustrator?

[Lukas Engqvist]

Was teaching a Basic Illustrator course, and found that I miss a book on learning to create with illustrator. Teaching Illustrator, can spend two days just going through the tools. I love the Illustrator WOW! and the zen of the pen is a great way to perfect the skills, but when it comes to simple drawing it is more like beinga an Art teacher than an instructor.

Does anyone know of a book that goes through creating things. Like excersises for drawing with simple geometrical shapes, moving to the pen tools and sneaking in all the theory into practical excersises… or is it a book I have to write myself?

[kialua]

Are the students you are teaching artists? Or do they not have that skill? I know drawing in Illustrator is hard. Just wonder what level they are at as artists.

Sounds like a needed book if you there is isn't one.

[Lukas Engqvist]

Last class I had was 4 self taught and one who had never seen the program. Was hard to stay on basics because of the many questions that kept interrupting. I did feel the frustration of the person who did not have previous experience, and on the rebound went through a post teaching depression, as I was thinking of how I had not managed to keep things simple enough.

Many of the books I seen are filled with tips and get very technical. But I'm thinking there must be a way to approach illustrator from a non technical side.

There are lotts of tutorials on the www, but they all assume a baic knowledge, or they have a technical approach. Guess what I'm after is a learning by doing approach. The classroom in a book as a good set of excersises, but they are still going quite alot of tools per excersise.

I'm thinking back to my school where the teachers would give an assignment to do a still life only using lines, then one analysing and drawing just negative space, another splitting a given subject into shades of grey.
I guess the problem is compounded by the fact that in illustrator one wants to find a personal style. But in order to find a style one has to maybe try many. So one needs excersises to understand the tools. When do I use simple primitives? When is brushes the appropriate way to go? Pen tool, Pencil, Blob Brush, they all great and learning by playing is the way to go.

But for the mid life proffessional who has been given CS and told well now you can fix/modify/create our clip art, there needs to be another approach than the techy. :rolleyes: Something that inspires and wakes the hunger to play.

In photoshop it is easier, because the tools are easy to comprehend and even with simple skills one can create impressive results.

[eugenetyson]

One thing we did when learning illustrator was to put a basic shape in the middle of the room.

A chair, some fruit, anything.

We then drew it. The lecturer then went through how to draw them using basic shapes.

Then we drew them again, and they turned out much better.

We then took this to the computer screen.

After a while of learning about Layers, Pen Tool. Pencil Tool, etc. we were eventually we were given a picture of Captain America, something like this

http://blog.newsok.com/nerdage/files/2009/03/15_captain_america_600.jpg



We redrew something like that. It took a long time. But you can see a lot of basic shapes going on there.

It was an interesting project. And the people who needed help got help from the lecturer.

Not sure if that helps.

[Lukas Engqvist]

If I was teaching illustrator over a term in artschool yes, that would be the way to go...

But in a computer classroom and starting from square one, and some people who take a course in illustrator have no art school back ground.

I do see the need to start with simple things, perhapps a cup and saucer wich would give nice clean lines etc would be a good start.

[eugenetyson]

I think in 2 days you'd only have enough time to teach them the bare basics.

I'd concentrate on the pen tool and using beizers. And also on tracing simple logos etc.


You could show them more complex things done in Illustrator and other stuff as a slideshow type of thing. But get them using the Pen tool.

[Lukas Engqvist]

Yes it does take a day just to understand the pen tool, the problem is what is usually promised in course adds. I doubt if one can get people to enroll to a course with just the pen tool on the curriculum.
An this is why the need arises to have good material, that can be a good base curriculum.

[eugenetyson]

Perhaps check out what others teach in 2 days

http://www.iact.ie/iopen24/product_info.php?products_id=27

That's one from around my way.

Perhaps show them a finished poster and work towards using different tools to create the poster?

[Lukas Engqvist]

I am well aware of what others teach, and the curriculum outcomes are fairly similar as I see them in other places. I was more concerned with the course-ware. I was wondering if others, prefereably those who are also trainers could reccomend some good courseware for beginners. If you do not feel you can do this in the forum, I'd be happy to hear even off forum.

[the_modelbase_guy]

I have been in the same situation. My solution was to ask for samples of what the students would be recreating within their job roles. Then work up some demo files or even use students' samples if available. This does two things for the student, 1) they get the necessary instruction to learn the tool or function and 2) they learn these concepts in the most relevant manner especially if they work on their own files.

As for a book or curriculum, it has not been written yet. Typically I use the CIB series then supplement it with my own content. I recently had some students that needed to recreate silhouette of buildings. I snagged some images from the web then went to work on illustrating them. After I showed them just how easily and quickly it could be done, I had them follow along with me. We discussed how to decide on just how much detail was necessary and how to quickly achieve it. These were students who knew nothing about illustration and even less about Illustrator. They loved it and set out on their own, comfortable in the knowledge that they could perform the illustration tasks that they would soon be facing.

Good luck with your teaching if I can be of help just drop me an email william@lodestone.com

[micke]

I teach an intro level Illustrator class in a local art school, and use the Visual QuickStart Guide for Illustrator as the required book, and have been using that book since Illustrator version 5.5. It is a pretty good reference book for most aspects of the program.

micke