Today, I would like to introduce a book called. The Hungry Caterpillar", a famous children's book that every library in the United States must have. The reason I would like to introduce this book is personally because of the beautiful illustrations and drawings in the book. I felt the energy in this book, not only as a children's book, but also as a work of art.

  ​And the biggest reason is that in the school class of the daughter who is now 6 years old, the parents of the birthday child visit the class to read a book or sing a happy birthday song together. My daughter asked me to read this book. As a foreigner and not a native speaker, I was given a burdensome homework assignment. But since my daughter is asking for it, such difficulties do not come very close. I decided to practice my pronunciation and learn about the book.

  ​But the moment I read this book, the burden gradually disappeared. Because the illustrations in the book were so beautiful and deep. The content was very simple, but the color and brushstrokes made a big impression on me.

  ​The book begins as follows for the sake of her sister Christina.

  The plot is very simple. The butterfly's eggs lie on the leaf during the night, then transform into a caterpillar in the warm sunlight.

  ​And the caterpillars soon begin to look for food.

  ​This book was discovered a little late for my daughter who can read and write numbers, but I think it is a good book for 3-year-old children who are interested in reading and have a concept of numbers. This is a passage where you can see how much the author loves children and made books from their eyes and levels. Counting is something adults naturally teach children.

  ​In particular, these caterpillars eat different numbers of different kinds of fruit on different days of the week. So it's great for kids to learn the names of fruits and the concept of counting and days of the week.

  ​Even after eating this fruit, the caterpillar is still hungry. So he eats the following foods. These are foods that children do not usually give to children because they are concerned about their health.

  Eventually, the caterpillar will have an upset stomach. He has to eat his own food the next day, the leaves.

  ​Then the caterpillar felt a little more comfortable. As time passed, he was no longer a hungry caterpillar.

  ​The caterpillar pupates to prepare it to become a butterfly.  And in the end it turned into a beautiful butterfly.

  ​I bought a caterpillar doll to make it more fun to read to children.

 ​When you open the zipper, you will see a butterfly as shown below.

 ​Carefully take it out and turn it over to become a butterfly.

  Eric Carle (June 25, 1929 – May 23, 2021) was an American author, designer and illustrator of children's books. His picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, first published in 1969, has been translated into more than 66 languages and sold more than 50 million copies. 

  As shown below, he applied acrylic on a large piece of paper with a broom and drew a picture at once.

  ​Paint the pattern by hand as above and cut out the shape to make the caterpillar like a collage.

  ​When I look at the work of the now deceased Eric Carle, I still feel his tremendous energy.

  ​Below is a selection of my favorite paintings from among his works.

  Painting was his best friend for the rest of his life for him, who went to America with only $40. He also overcame the post-traumatic stress that he had been with for the rest of his life through painting. If you look at his innocent, beautiful and hopeful paintings, you can understand what message he is sending to the world.

  Today, I am going to show you the process of converting image files with extensions .jpg, .gif etc to .ai files for vector image in Illustrator. 

  ​Recently, I converted the image file on the left into the file for Illustrator on the right. At the same time as the conversion, the picture was also modified.

  As in the examples above, you can simply convert an image file to an illustrator file and edit or change it and save it.
 
 First, after uploading your image file like below, and click the layer (not the original one, only click the sub image like below. )

 And then you can find the image Trace menu on the top side bar like red rectangle. 

 Next you can drop down the menu and select the High Fidelity Photo. 

After selecting that , you can make sure the processing status like below. 

If everything goes well, you can find the expand menu. You have to click expand menu. 

 For modifications, you can make the selecting line as ungroup status. 

 To explain again with an example, select the image you want to convert and click High Fidelity Photo in the image trace menu.

 And then if you find the Expand text, you have to click it. 

For adding or removing the image, you have to ungroup the each image lines. 

  ​In my case, I added a yellow wind mark to the thunderstorm picture as shown below and saved it as an illustrator file.

  Today, I will try to draw a simple animal animations with Illustrator. The animals to be drawn are 12 symbolic creatures from the Zodiac. Related information has been posted on the blog. (Go to related blog)

  Most of all, I will explain the mouse face, which is the easiest to draw.

 First, draw a circle as shown below. After that, make the ears with small circles.

 You need to erase the ear line on the inside of the face. In general, if you just erase using the eraser tool, it will not work. The Illustrator erases by plane unit. So, when erasing a line like this, you must first designate this line as a path and erase it.

​ In a nutshell, you have to go Object ---> Path---> Outline Stroke, and then erase it. 

  ​Next, complete the eyes, nose and mouth with the Blob Brush tool.

 For painting the shape, you have to go Live paint pallet by click on the left sidebar.  

  If you feel some difficulty to find it, you can go Object---> Live Paint---> Make. 

 ​Specify a color to fill, and when the cursor changes to a paint bucket, click the corresponding face. If you want to use a pattern fill, you can also choose it like below!

  ​Sometimes, if the live paint function doesn't work like the ear wheel, create an area with the pen tool as shown below. At this time, create a new layer and draw on it. 

   ​After drawing everything as shown below, change the order of the layers

Complete the details as shown the final image. 

Today, I am going to show you an elementary illustrator drawing. I drew a ballerina a while ago, but it's an illustration related to psychology this time.   

  ​I wanted to paint a picture of learned helplessness, that is, to get used to the limits that I have made myself before without even questioning them and get used to them within those limits.
Learned helplessness is a reaction to giving up, a response to stopping, and the belief that whatever you do is not very important. If you tie a baby elephant to a small stake, it will try to escape several times. However, it will not be possible. The baby elephant accepts that he will never escape and stops trying at a specific moment. Even though the elephant can easily escape when it becomes an adult, the thought will not cross his mind, pulling out the shrunken stakes. So he remains tied up.

It is how most of us behave. We have been conditioned to be unable or unable to do certain things. We have been bound by expectations from our families, friends, and society. And we often don't stop checking to see if these things are true. We don't dare to do anything against them, mainly based on fear.

Most of the time, we do not realize that we view certain ideas as cosmic truths, but they are only cultural conditioning or breaking conclusions.

I often use the  Blob Brush Tool  to draw a non-lined surface of an object.

And then prepare your palette .

​Then add a color palette of skin tones from the library as shown below and put them in the panel you use often. I used a skin tone with a hint of pink.

​First, draw a rough line like this.

 ​Then, take out a thick brush and paint the surface as shown below. First, I paint the bright areas.

 ​Then, use a mid-tone skin color to add a medium contrast.

 ​Then draw with a darker tone. ​At this time, I also drew the stakes. Because it is in the darkest place, I drew it all at once.

  Next, you can use Basic Graphics_Textures tool for expressing a shadow. It's my favorite thing to show somehow depth of a painting. You can add it from the library.

If I create a shadow, I have to add another layer for editing in the future. 

Here is the result after applying a shadow.

Use the effect below to complete the ivory and claw parts. Go to Effect---> Texture--->Stained Glass

If you can see the pop up window with options, you can choose the Grain for expressing shiny bright paint. 

With above the effect, you can draw tooth and nails.

Below is the display, I made for products in Redbubble. 

   ​I received the following paper from the school where my second child attends the Native American Parade. Today I'm going to show you how to turn this physical paper into a digital file image. The program used is Illustrator.
First, take a picture of the paper as shown below. (​Just take a picture like the one below.)

  The picture above shows the symbols  called pictograph used by Native Americans and their meanings.
​
First, import this file into Illustrator.
You have to use Ctrl + Shift + P and then put the image on the white canvas like below. (or you can go to upper menu like this : File--> Place)
​And then you can find the below screen. 

 Second, you can go to the upper menu like this: Object---> tracing image--> make and expand.
​After that, you can find the below result. 

If you can find out below message, click O.K button. 

Here is the result after applying image tracing.