As I am trying to better familiarize myself with Illustrator, I thought I would try my hand at digital painting. I have never painted or drawn anything in Illustrator, only (what used to be) Flash, and the experience is very different.

This is Milk! My subject and two year old, castor colored, mini-Rex rabbit. To start out this portrait, I placed a photo of Milk on my Illustrator artboard and got started by drawing an ellipse on top, adding points, and conforming the shape to his head. I did the same for his body and paws next. After that I began painting with the brush tool, changing sizes, colors, and the brushes themselves, until I got a final result I was happy with. From my experimenting around last week with my personal logo, I knew I wanted to add a circle with a strong stroke to it for the background. When I saw the leafy stroke, I knew it was perfect.