I then started work fleshing out the face and tummy (Fig.08). I prepared colour palettes that were to be used for the highlights, shadows and dark areas of the gradient mesh (press "U” to activate your gradient mesh). I then coloured the nodes of the mesh on the left side with the highlight colour; mid-tones are on the right, and darker tones on the corners. Here is the result of mesh colouring (Fig.08). This technique is very easy to use but requires a lot of memory, so I refrain from using it as much as possible.


I applied the mesh on the eye mask (Fig.09a). I pasted it below the eye-bags; this gave depth and a slight "meanness” to his rather boring face.

Tip: To place a shape over or under another shape, cut the object you want to paste (or Ctrl + X), choose the object or group of objects, and then press Ctrl + B to paste below the object or group of objects. Press Ctrl + F to paste on top of the object or group of objects (Fig.09b).



To create the pattern of warts, I first of all created a circle shape and added a white-to-pink radial gradient (Fig.10). I reshaped the circle, as shown, and spread it randomly (Fig.11). I selected the shapes and dragged the selection onto the swatch window. This automatically added to the pattern swatches!  From my preserved drawing, I copied the face and tummy and applied the new wart pattern (Fig.12). I then set the shape's Transparency to "Multiply”. Here is the blending result (Fig.12).




At this point I created a custom brush. Typically, whenever I make an illustration in Adobe Illustrator I also customise my brushes. Here's a simple way to do it: create an elliptical shape with black colour fill, and then press F5 to activate the Brushes window (Fig.13). Now drag and drop the ellipse on to the Brushes window. Set the New Brush to "New Art Brush” in the option window, and then hit OK (Fig.14). Another window will then pop-up. In the Art Brush Options window, set Colourisation Method to "Tints”. This allows you to choose any colour for the outline of the brush. If you set it to "None” then it will just be in black, or the default colour of the brush (Fig.15).