Making Backgrounds in Illustrator

 This is a monochrome I created. There is a solid base layer. The fan shape is a blend of an irregular brush stroke. The shape in the opposite corner was created with the pen tool and a gradient.

 This was created with the arc tool and the blend tool. Then I duplicated and reflected it and changed the colors. The bottom layer is a gradient blend.

 Here I used text to create the background. I just played around with different fonts, sizes, colors, and opacity. I decided to have some fun with. It's hard to work with words without giving them meaning.

 This has the orange base layer, then the green layer has the halftone effect applied with a gradient transparency mask.

This has a red base layer with a halftone gradient transparency mask. The horizontal bars were made with the blend tool and a gradient. The circles were made with the shape tool and an irregular brush. They have a gradient transparency mask as well.

Color Adjustment and More Masks

Various methods of selection were used on the fries (magic wand), the milk carton (lasso tool), and the lettuce (quick selection) to create new adjustment layers and enhance or alter the colors. In the case of the fries a levels adjustment was made, and a drop shadow was used as well. For the milk carton the colors were inverted. A hue/saturation adjustment was made to turn the lettuce into red cabbage.

 This image is a composite of the background, which is an image I took near my home in the Santa Cruz mountains, and the dove. The dove was selected from it's background using the color range command, which was very simple since it was against a solid blue sky. I used the refine edge tool to decontaminate the blue out of the edges and clean up the margins. I also brightened up some of the greens in the background using a layer mask and the hue/saturation adjustment.

These statues from Easter Island were dropped onto a background with a more dramatic sky than the one they came from. I used the color range command to select them, which again was very simple because they were in front of a solid blue sky. The refine edge tool was used to reset the radius of the selection, move the edges and increase the contrast. After they were moved onto the new background I used the magnetic lasso to clean up a few spots that came with them.

More Drawing in Illustrator

Cityscape & Landscape

Drawing in Illustrator

Rocket Science

This image was taken at the Embarcadero in San Francisco. The color was manipulated using Alpha channels to mask and create the individual selections, then creating adjustment layers. The rocket, the boy, the sidewalk, and the bricks in between were each masked, selected, and adjusted separately using the hue/saturation tool.