The evolution of images from pencil to Illustrator

All images start off with a really sharp pencil, a blank piece of paper and a good cup of tea. Then it's time to do some research and get as much source information on the subject as possible, where ever possible this is by finding the subject and taking lots of photos, failing that it is image searches on the interwebby.

Once the image is drawn out (several times) it is scanned into Photoshop, a few tweaks of the levels to clean up the lines and it's saved as a psd file.

The file is then opened up in Illustrator and converted to a template, in outline mode the basic shapes are then traced and coloured.

Using a combination of clipping masks, gaussian blurs and gradient meshes the shading and highlights start building up.

Details start to be added and the shading work continues, with constant reference to the visual sources.

Even more shading, plus some tweaks to shapes of various parts, the need for alterations becoming evident as the rendering takes place.

Outline screenshots to show just how many paths go to make up the illustrations.

The final details are added and the image is ready!