Vector Process - folding Scissors

Vectors are a huge pain requiring you to plan and think carefully before committing. Fortunately, with the arrival of gorgeous software like Procreate and Affinity Designer on the iPad you can make some serious strides forward that were much more of a pain just five years ago.

Here is very short walkthrough to give you a taste of how I make nice vector art.

Roughs

Mainly I use a biro and a sketchbook unless it’s something more complicated requiring me to balance a lot of elements. In this case I am using some reference images of a really bizarre pair of folding scissors I saw in a lesson this week (thanks KB!).

Procreate neat inking

If the image doesn’t look good at the bitmap stage it will NEVER look good in vectors - the key is to be as organised as possible before touching those mathemagical curves. I remember seeing vector tutorial magazines in the late nineties and thinking that the vector software must the best thing ever - but it was the organisation and design skill of the artist I was marvelling at!

Affinity designer Vectors

To save boring you I made a 5 minute process video that skims through the stages.

I hope that this is useful. If you have any questions, comments or feedback please get in touch.

The Big Picture published

Since creating the Big Picture mural I wanted to have something that was more portable and shareable. I had the idea of making a gatefold leaflet with some explanatory notes on the reverse like so:

My original design notes.

10 Publishing have now printed this leaflet. This purpose of this is to have something handy that gives a sense of the overarching Bible storyline.

If you have used it and found it useful please leave a positive review on the site.