HOW IT HAPPENED
I am not a great artist; I am not a natural artist. By that I mean I can't seem to get the ideas I see in my head out into the world as I want them to be.
I watch people who sketch and always I think to myself, "How do they do that?" I mean, I can see how they're doing it but how does it work?
To practice my sketching I often follow Kyle Webster's Draw-A-Long shows, so I pulled out Girl With An Umbrella. A very rough sketch converted to vector and then adding colour, trying to dress up the sketch that I stumble onto something that sparked my creativity.
Using one of the custom Illustrator brushes I repeatedly drew circles. Not very exciting, I grant you, but the brush strokes layered in an interesting way. Circleism is born.
CREATING THE CUSTOM BRUSHES
Now, there's a couple of problems with Circleism in this first form. Drawing each brush stroke by hand creates a lot of anchor points, and my right thumb joint let me know it was not happy with all this work!
It is time to give this some thought. And I bought myself some time by getting ill and having a week in hospital.
The solution is Custom Illustrator Brushes, of course! I'm still new to creating my own Illustrator brushes and it takes me a few days of trial and error to create my first set.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/0b927b87-e227-4f76-90b7-33fea8d8a2ee/fd1918cf-3e68-4891-bd1a-993bfa782eed_rw_1920.jpg?h=2f91107faa1d3de0180607f54728c418)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/0b927b87-e227-4f76-90b7-33fea8d8a2ee/19ad2588-b4d1-4ff3-a701-8dc83d92a64a_rw_1200.jpg?h=a00cbb8ace28d9a63147002e6ce21a10)
A HALLOWE'EN WITCH
Again, a sketch from Kyle's Draw-A-Long provides the practice subject. It's October, an appropriate time for a witch to fly on her broom, accompanied by her faithful cat. As usual, it starts with my rough sketch which then becomes simple shapes and lines in Illustrator.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/0b927b87-e227-4f76-90b7-33fea8d8a2ee/0e66ca87-c8ce-4ea3-ba93-bffc01c69717_rw_1920.jpg?h=0c7940edaab6d8259f1ee9b4c990e239)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/0b927b87-e227-4f76-90b7-33fea8d8a2ee/2ac1691b-fbc7-4e8b-884c-35a3c348e481_rw_1920.jpg?h=4ff9f07bfa74450512c1d91620b8dbd9)
I haven't got a snazzy timelapse video of creating my witch; I ought to think about doing that one day.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/0b927b87-e227-4f76-90b7-33fea8d8a2ee/576550c6-4a3f-477a-b882-43b7d9a63992_rw_1920.jpg?h=57b8c13383369ca3c9a49df7296c075f)