Digital Pointillism Tutorial

For this tutorial I used Adobe Illustrator, but you could use any comparable program to achieve the same effect. I have my color settings set to RGB, because I intend to put this up on Society6. Illustrator automatically sets to CMYK. I would also like to mention that I am using my trackpad to draw all of this, I am not using anything like a Wacom tablet.

The first step is to choose the size of your canvas and your reference picture. My canvas is fairly large (3300 x 5100) because of how Society6 works. My reference photo is a picture of Ken that I took at this year's Pony Penning. My canvas size required me to scale up the picture. 

The next step is to trace your image. It doesn't have to be perfect or pretty. It will serve as a roadmap of where you are going to place your dots.

Next, you're going to color sample the section you want to start with, with the eyedropper tool (pictured right). This color will usually show up in the fill box which is the box which is completely filled with the color. You're going to want to switch that color into the stroke. You can either do this manually by clicking the arrow by the fill and stroke icons, or let the brush tool do it automatically.  

After you switch the color to the stroke, you are going to want to select the brush tool. This is what you are going be using to create your marks.

the color is in the stroke

I usually start with the 15pt brush and mark out a vague section of where I'm going to place the color. This also helps me pace myself. Getting a small section finished seems a lot easier than the entirety of the subject's face.

I then scale down to the 5pt brush to fill in some of the spaces. I also feather out these smaller marks to prepare for blending the different colors together. 

Repeat the steps above for the next color. Remember to intersperse the second color into the first for a blended effect

Sometimes, depending on the lighting of your reference, the eyedropper tool will give you some very dark colors. Depending on how light the other colors are in your piece, this may look very odd. If that is the case, take the lighter color and intersperse it throughout the darker color. Make sure to zoom out to make sure that this helped to blend the colors together.

When you get close to finishing your piece, you are going to want to decide how to finish the piece. I'm personally a fan of letting the subject dissolve into dots.

When you are finished, delete your guideline. You're finished!