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February 21, 2010

Preparing To Eat An Elephant



As I learned long ago, there is but one way to eat an Elephant. One bite at a time. 
In my quest to learn to draw and paint on the computer, my friend Bea suggested that I invest in The Adobe Illustrator WOW! book (appropriate to my version of Illustrator - CS3) Inside are beautiful computer generated pieces, each done by an experienced artist who has broken it all down into each step taken in the work's creation. I imagined a more simple cook book sort of thing (with lots of pictures and/or maybe simple diagrams). 
What came, inside this attractive cover, at first glance looks closer to a manual for learning to fly a 747. I am trying to be only slightly daunted as I go where many friends and colleagues, like dear Bea, have gone before!  I hope to share the more interesting results. The accompanying tears, blood and sweat might work as a sort of sauce .  Wish me luck! 

2 comments:

  1. Adobe's software is agonizingly non-intuitive! I took a PhotoShop class at our community college a few years ago. We used Adobe's "Classroom in a Book" as our text. The book presents progressively more complex lessons, step by step, keystroke by keystroke. We completed a lesson every week and by the end of the semester, we completed about 75% of the book.

    Now years later, I still reference this book because I can just look at the photos of each lesson and see which features were covered - I don't have to know the name of the feature (can't look it up in the index if you don't know the name of a feature). I then look at the sequence of keystrokes in the chapter to jog my memory of how to do a trick.

    They have one for Illustrator, you can pick up a used one for under $20:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0321492005/ref=dp_olp_1

    Good luck! I have no doubt that you'll get your wings in no time!

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  2. Dear DB, I've found (and my friend Bea agrees) the best way to learn Adobe programs is to decide on something you want to make. To learn Photoshop, I set out to do a business card. So I knew the things I had to do to do this "by hand" so I searched around the menus and drop downs etc til I found something that worked. Maybe not the fastest or best way to learn, but it was fairly fast learning what I needed to know. After that, I learn something new each time I work with Photoshop. Hoping the same approach will work here. Fingers crossed.

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