I've become rather addicted to Skillshare classes, which I'll be blogging about in the next few weeks as I've signed up for so many. First I'm starting with

Matt Kaufenberg's Character Illustration

. It was to design & illustrate a pirate character using Illustrator and Photoshop.

Delving into my past again now. Many years ago my art director ( at a greetings card studio) had said the boy character I'd drawn for a birthday card was 'scary' and the client would be horrified. It didn't go any further than that. In the intervening decade I didn't draw anymore characters as I'd been so put off by that negative response.

So with this course I wised to overcome that fear. Its not that I don't want draw kids, or things with faces, or cute -I just felt they would all look scary! I ignored the pirates and concentrated on some Christmas designs I was excited by. Matt's instructions were very clear, and he had so many cool tips. It starts by tracing your sketch in Illustrator, releasing it as layers then exporting to Photoshop.

That's were the fun really begins. As part of the package were links to Photoshop brushes which I greedily uploaded. OOohh the fun I had - I had missed texture so much. I was extremely pleased with the results, I couldn't believe I had made this art. I had felt it was just beyond me. Now I can see other applications for this wonderful technique (for me) - expect to see more of it in the coming months.