Technical Illustrators.org Forum

Me again. A line art question this time. Particularly pertaining to how best to add shadowing or "grey" areas.
I know as a rule, line art should be just that....void of too much shadowing and texture. After all, line art is meant to show the concept, or idea clearly and without clutter, or without too much detail. Let's not speak about issues with printing or photocopying.

Sometimes you can't get around it, or for practical reasons need to add some shadow.

What are some solutions? What about some hatching using the pen or brush tool? I like the idea of using thicker lines to show depth or contrast. Please post or link to examples...

matt_lorenzi wrote:Me again. A line art question this time. Particularly pertaining to how best to add shadowing or "grey" areas.
I know as a rule, line art should be just that....void of too much shadowing and texture. After all, line art is meant to show the concept, or idea clearly and without clutter, or without too much detail. Let's not speak about issues with printing or photocopying.

Sometimes you can't get around it, or for practical reasons need to add some shadow.

What are some solutions? What about some hatching using the pen or brush tool? I like the idea of using thicker lines to show depth or contrast. Please post or link to examples...

Why not try a Google image search for Patent Drawing Shading. It may give you some ideas.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=line+are ... 20&bih=995

Fellow TurboCAD user: http://www.dakatec.com/services/design-patent-drawings/

I will try posting here again later with my actual response. I just want to make sure I can post a reply this time around.

This was the last freelance work I did before I got my fulltime job. http://www.swhowardillustration.blogspo ... ation.html I made a semi-realistic render of the camera, but the client wanted the camera to look like the old Bolex illustrations where there is no gray, but still appearance of gradients using black and white. This was all done in Illustrator and quite honestly, gave me quite the headache to figure out without prior knowledge of different line methods. Essentially, I just did several blends with each end of the blend having a different line wait + a different varied dashed line. This helped produce a faded look to the "gradients" and an added bonus of giving it the scratchboard look... or as close as I could get it to be. My early days of college were easier. We used ink, scratched into it, and when needed, applied white-out. That project has been one of the few things I have worked on in the past few years where I felt it might have been easier to produce traditionally rather than digitally. If anyone is interested I could try and produce a short demo of the process.

That's pretty cool looking Steven. I guess there comes a point where "hatching" in AI can only go so far.
I imagine you could do a lot in Photoshop, using filters to create hatching, then converting to vectors and removing any grey.
Still, sounds like pen and ink may be faster