From a Few Lines to Cartoon Boy

Good morning!

I was playing around with some simple lines yesterday. Instead of kaleidoscop-
ing, as I usually do, I thought I'd try something different.

I used Effects>distortion> and tried several different distortions. I tried wave, spikey, and curlicue and came up with some interesting layers.

My first layer is always the lines, blocks, circles, and other items I've done as vectors. I was only using black on this particular one.

I then turn the vector into a raster, duplicate it and hide the original layer.

Then I use an effect, just hitting the dice button. It gives you random settings. I hit it till I find something I like.

As you can read in the first left picture, this actually came up on one of my layers. It was tilted, but when I turned my head, this is what I saw.

After I copied this to a new canvas, I duplicated the layers, and erased everything (with the selection tool) except one item. I did this on each layer, leaving a different item on each separate layer. In this way, I had movable working items. Those you see in picture 2 at the top.

The nice thing is you can make the items any size you want: BIG EYES or little eyes, etc.

The second set of pictures shows my progression for developing my character. At first, I thought he would be an old man, but he turned out to be a young man. Even a boy!

And here he is ... finished!

He has BIG EYES and little ears.

The background also uses another selection I had on another layer as does the design on his shirt.

Coloring the background was fun.

Here's to a terrific Sunday. I hope you find it restful. Enjoy today!

I'll see you all tomorrow!