Vector Portrait Essentials with Chris Rathbone

Join us for another Creative Session with our favourite sports illustrator Chris Rathbone who will be using Affinity Designer for iPad to create a striking vector portrait.
Chris will be available in the Live Chat during the KZbin Premiere to answer your questions as well!
The image Chris is working from is available on Shutterstock here: www.shutterstock.com/image-ph...
Chris has created illustrations for a host of clients and agencies within the sports industry, including Formula 1, NBA, Formula E, the Grand National, Tour de France, the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Ferrari, RedBull and Puma. He has also created illustrations for leading magazines such as CAR Magazine, Top Gear and Match of the Day.
You can follow Chris on Twitter at / r4thbone and on Instagram at / r4thbone .
Affinity Creative Sessions
Led by top creatives who use Affinity, Affinity Creative Sessions give you the chance to follow along as incredible artists, illustrators, designers and photographers work on a project using the apps.
We announce details of upcoming sessions on our social channels, so make sure you're following us on Instagram ( / affinitybys... , Twitter ( / affinitybyserif ) and Facebook ( / affinitybyse.. ) to stay updated about future premieres.
You can find out more about the Affinity suite, including getting access to free trials, over on affinity.serif.com/.

[@RathboneIllustration]

Thanks to everyone for watching, and I hope you enjoy/enjoyed the tutorial!

[@Sai_Chaitanya]

that was really cool

[@SonnyNguyen]

Thanks for sharing this

[@SKMRify]

How to connect with you?

[@BLUETEAMVERSE]

It’s 2024 and your tutorial has become the system I need to trace a car for the target designs I need. Thank you so much. I hope you could create a tutorial for tracing other stuffs like cars, motorcycles, places.

[@alejmc]

I’m a bit mindblown about how nice these claw like spiky fill shapes work… that for me is where the expertise and experience shines, where and how to put these shadows, low lights, etc shapes that still conform to a human face. Great video, enjoyed it all.

[@Fancylooks]

Back in the early 90s I worked for a newspaper and I had to do so many portraits in the grey scale style, you have just remembered this past experience to me. I had to use an Illustrator that we had back them , Illustrator 2 or Illustrator 88, you could not work in preview, only in black lines, and I had to keep clicking on preview to see what I was really doing, then back to the vector lines and back to preview... it was not easy! Now it has changed so much and Affinity designer is such an improvement, I have it and it is so versatile, thanks for it

[@reignspriest07]

Dude, you’re simply magical! Baaaaddessst tutorial meeeen…explanations on point, tool mentioning on point, visibility of application on point…one of the clearest intelligent tutorial on any creative art form I have viewed online. Kudos to you. You deserve more views and subscribers. Thanks a lot.

[@muelfernandez]

Just what I’m looking for. Very nice and comprehensive. The best I’ve seen so far. Thanks a lot!

[@RathboneIllustration]

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@joeoglefigureart]

I'm definitely using this technique on my next figure piece. Thanks for sharing 👍

[@SKMRify]

An interesting vector portrait style that is really vibrant.

[@7thSeasonSociety]

This was excellent, thank you for sharing your process.

[@JohnLeaver]

This is without doubt the best explained tutorial I have ever followed. Also such a clear calm voice. Thanks

[@RathboneIllustration]

Ah, thank you!

[@Goldmangun]

Really impressive work!

[@justthatjoeguy]

This is such a helpful video! I got so many ideas and tricks from this.. thank you for making this

[@LeifEliasson]

Greate footage so instructive and helpful -

[@davidking2085]

I really enjoyed this walkthrough of your process, it gives me ideas of how to approach my own designs in future. More like this please!

[@RathboneIllustration]

I have been working on lots of time lapse and tutorial videos which will be dropping over the coming weeks, so if you subscribe to my You Tube and keep an eye out, you’ll see lots more content coming soon!

[@davidking2085]

@@RathboneIllustration Subscribed! Look forward to seeing more examples! I really like vibrant colours with the realistic line work in this one, quite pop arty. Interested to see if there will be more of the same or different styles!

[@sander1133]

@@RathboneIllustration I just got the iPad version. I'll be sure to check out your tutorials - well explained and a good starter for me.

[@claudiusschonherr7199]

Thanks a lot, great stuff! Just vectorized a picture of my cat following this walkthrough and it turned out to be amazing! 😼

[@KrapicTV]

Magnifique vidéo, j'adore 💖

[@gregorioportela]

Very expressive, congratulations

[@SimonHakai_]

This is great!

[@kimmolaine665]

Very nice. Thank You.

[@benbarling3790]

Great video. Very educational. Awesome finished product. Thank you.

[@RathboneIllustration]

Thank you. I have been working on lots of time lapse and tutorial videos which will be dropping over the coming weeks, so if you subscribe to my You Tube and keep an eye out, you’ll see lots more content coming soon!

[@fayevalentine3712]

I'm impressed

[@Tempest_5485]

Great work!

[@MarkXP]

Thanks great tutoriql I learn many tricks 👌

[@strawhatdvinci]

TIL about the Global Colors feature. Thank you so much!

[@romenpheonixx7005]

Nice!

[@jakartabogortourguide6158]

Just learnt global colors from this vid. Thanks!

[@RathboneIllustration]

Ha! Global colours are amazing! I’ll be sharing lots more tutorials and time lapse videos on my You Tube channel, so keep an eye out for them.

[@drawwithclawsarturoa.6772]

I do want the vector rasterized tool any image into outlines to be able to control detail quality. So far is just threshold option .

[@chinaminer]

I am just watching it a year later, but that's a lot of good content to learn

[@markoehlschlager3862]

Excellent work. Well produced demo/tutorial. Although the path tracing technique with the pen tool is expertly applied here, I must say that jobs like this one just scream out for a "blob brush" and a complementary "vector erase brush" tool. It would make the painting and illustration work like this so much faster and more intuitive.

[@RathboneIllustration]

Thank you. Blob brush is the primary reason I have to use other programs for certain jobs. I think there have been a lot comments/requests for that, so hopefully it is coming soon!

[@romher8753]

How do you do make all the colors blend together to make a smooth gradient to show depth?

[@drawwithclawsarturoa.6772]

Hi Chris great job have you try the glass gradient in the glasses? Tha might work too. Is a really cool tool affinity have.

[@RathboneIllustration]

Thank you! I consciously try to avoid using gradients in my work.

[@Jcvergaraofficial]

Do you have a course tutorial i want to learn how to do that! Your amazing!

Amazing! I'm just confused about the order of some of these layers, how are layers like Highlights and Glows visible if they are below Shadows and Low lights?

[@jamesmarin3194]

I’d like to know more about this too. One of the only things holding me back.

[@85joua]

hello great job amazing workflow. I have one question, at one point you say that you can switch pencil and pen tool and continue drawing the path. could you explain how to do it on desktop?

[@paulssloss3968]

Yes I would like to know as well. I can't get it to work on either ipad or desktop. It always startes a new path.

[@easyeasegraphics]

The shadows part I am trying but couldn't make it how to make that edge ?

[@shams923]

Why the download option has been disabled?

[@VickyLatorreArt]

He mentioned he has done a video like this for the desktop version. Does anybody know where I can find that video? Thank you.

[@Gwogster]

This is the one... kzbin.info/www/bejne/n37Pe6WPep2LpZI

[@katm1884]

How do you switch between pen and pencil while drawing a path?

[@cjthe1206]

Question.. For vector art work do I need to use affinity designer or affinity photo?

[@chefhomeboiardee4574]

Designer all day.

[@Jcvergaraofficial]

Can you share the link about global color? Video thanks

[@georgewashington7251]

Hi Chris, what do you charge for something like that? I have had several pictures of myself and others "converted" into drawings similar to what you go through in your video. Curious....thank you,

[@evenmind-music]

I can’t switch between pen and pencil without starting a new line on my iPad. Anyone knows how it’s done?

[@Affinitybyserif]

If you have an Apple Pencil (2nd Generation) you can double tap on the side to change tools - you may need to configure this to the specific tools you want to change to and from.

[@PochoNieves]

This type of art takes so many hours with the PEN TOOL... but it can be done exponentially faster with the PENCIL TOOL. I kind of wonder why not just do pencil tool instead?

[@KuttyJoe]

It would have a different look in the end, I guess. I think also that using a Cintiq/stylus would make this go faster than using a mouse.

[@lulila1941]

Some of photoshop brushes don’t work correctly in all affinity aps(

[@framejockey]

Some are raster brushes and some are vector brushes. You have to be on the correct persona.

[@johnny6437]

If you’re gonna show the iPad screen for the most of the time, better set your video’s aspect ratio to 4:3.

[@000CloudStrife]

Affinity needs to be able to handle medium format and A7riv files. Also you guys need to work on making your raw development power and retouching tools top priority if you want to compete with the big boys. Affinity is great and these changes would take over the industry by storm. Capture one is currently my raw development platform because of this.

[@blabla32902]

Hi all, is there any procedural way of doing this like in this tutorial: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eXjHeKSZdraXg7c&ab_channel=Texturelabs

[@axlcinema]

You sound exactly like Frank Lampard mate.

[@ibrahimayad6732]

Can anyone please send this message to the company administration " why don't you support RTL text.? This is important."

[@Affinitybyserif]

Hi Ibrahim, this is a very commonly requested feature that we would love to implement in future, but we don't currently have a timeline for it. Thanks for your feedback.

[@nothingspeaks]

i was interested until i saw that the whole layout is nothing like im used to and got overwhelemed

[@Affinitybyserif]

Hi, bear in mind this is the iPad version, if you are looking for a desktop app the interface will be much different! Also, we have Version 2 of the apps out now, the interface is different again, if you want a 30 day free trial you can access that here: affinity.serif.com/designer/#buy

[@nothingspeaks]

@@Affinitybyserif ah okay I figured it was V2 I have the first version am(got it for 50 bucks when it was on sale) and I don't really see the point to buy v2

[@Welcome_to_real_life_]

First Like!

[@dedwahyu6054]

When discount 50% ?

[@Hart-en-Ziel]

Today!

[@TheOverlordOfProcrastination]

The only thing that put me off was the pronunciation of drawing as drorring 😫 Pedantic, I know. But....

[@KuttyJoe]

LOL Your spelling of the pronunciation is spot on.