Technical Illustrators.org Forum

Hello guys,

I decided to create a topic for my works. I don't have a portfolio yet so here I just upload them to ask for critiques. Illustration is a hobby for me at the moment my main job is an administrative spreadsheet fill job and when I have a little free time I work on my illustrations.
So my question is how to start a portfolio? Draw fictional works first or try to knock on doors and ask for references ? I play with the idea to ask the company where I work but I don't know if it's a good idea or not. What's your opinion?

To start, I upload my first "official" work. I made it to illustrate my flat to a company who is calculating the size of the heating panels because I change the heating system. So I thought for a test it's a good idea if I illustrate where my flat is, how thick the walls are and so on..
What do you guys think ? I think it's not bad but could be better! Could you give me some critique?

Looking great, Georg! I don't see any construction issues. Lineweights look nice!

One thing you might try is adding a thin white outline around your black leader lines so they don't get lost in the black line of the drawing (example here by Ninian Carter). Or using a different color for the leader lines.

So my question is how to start a portfolio? Draw fictional works first or try to knock on doors and ask for references ? I play with the idea to ask the company where I work but I don't know if it's a good idea or not. What's your opinion?

In my experience, personal projects or self-assigned work like this is the best way to go. Just choose something that interests you, or a question that you want answered visually, and get drawing! Reference material isn't too hard to come across these days. I like illustrating consumer goods, so when I'm thinking about a portfolio project, I check out https://www.ifixit.com/

Clients tend not be be visual people (that's your job). They only know what they want when they see it in your portfolio. So fill it with things that you're interested in illustrating.

Thanks for the advice! I tried what you said and I don't know why I don't used it before! It's work nicely! At first I just tried with color gradient because I found it strange if the outline of the leader lines are all the way white, but later I felt it better. I checked the website what you said and found a lot of example for this type of highlight. In some works leader lines not used only for "pointing" somewhere but separate the text in to blocks and I found this a very clever and efficient idea!
Like this : https://graphicgibbon.com/smart-watch That site is very inspirational!
By the way, learning from these things in the future I plan forward more and make my drawings more structured !

Hi guys,
I want to make the cutaway drawing of an NSI (Nasa Standard Ingiter), but I don't know how to color it properly. I didn't find a correct method to color my lineart. I looked at others' work and made a few attempts but I'm not satisfied with the results. I just don't really feel how I should shade these materials. I read the tutorials on Kevin Hulsey's page but he doesn't go too deep into painting techniques and I don't feel like I control the values correctly, where the lights come from, what to do with bigger radiused edges, where to draw shining edges, etc ...
These kind of shading techniques what I want to achieve:

http://www.khulsey.com/portfolioimages/ ... ploded.jpg
http://www.khulsey.com/portfolioimages/ ... -brake.jpg
http://www.khulsey.com/kodak.html
http://www.automotiveillustrations.com/ ... utaway.jpg

Could anybody recommend any book or tutorial? Or are there any books about illustration shadings? I didn't really find any deeper lesson in this subject on the internet, but maybe I just used the bad keywords.
I attached a few attempts but I had problems with the uploading, so I decided to share the link instead:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

By the way I don't use vector graphic programs for lineart, I modell the 3D objects and render the lineart with Blender and then paint it in 2d programs. I use vectographic programs only for the text and text bubbles.

Maybe Scott Robertson? He's has a book titled How To Render.

His YouTube channel has lots of great tutorials and demos:
Shiny Car Rendering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4uJpHaHZTc
Lighting Strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARoOqcRXq-8
Introduction to Chrome Rendering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RYAwz9SzZ0

In general, learning to render for tech illustration is pretty much the same as learning traditional painting. There's the theory (how different values represent light and shade, how that creates the illusion of volume, material, texture, etc) and observation (looking at things closely to see how the theory applies in reality). So you can broaden your search to "how to render metal" or "how to render chrome"... you may get results with pencil, marker, paint, Photoshop, but the theory will all be the same.

Hope that helps!

JamesProvost wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 13, 2021 1:48 am

Maybe Scott Robertson? He's has a book titled How To Render.

His YouTube channel has lots of great tutorials and demos:
Shiny Car Rendering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4uJpHaHZTc
Lighting Strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARoOqcRXq-8
Introduction to Chrome Rendering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RYAwz9SzZ0

In general, learning to render for tech illustration is pretty much the same as learning traditional painting. There's the theory (how different values represent light and shade, how that creates the illusion of volume, material, texture, etc) and observation (looking at things closely to see how the theory applies in reality). So you can broaden your search to "how to render metal" or "how to render chrome"... you may get results with pencil, marker, paint, Photoshop, but the theory will all be the same.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the quick response! I think this is what I was looking for! I found tutorials that just discussed things superficially, but Scott's book is very detailed. For example I never heard about the "1-2-3 Read" or the "value assigning rules" and so on, but as I see these details have an important effect on the end quality of an artwork. So I think these lessons will be super helpful for me! I just need some freetime to try them out.