> I feel that using the Pen tool to draw everything is about as sensible as writing a program entirely in assembly language.
As someone who's only ever used the pen tool, I feel mildly attacked!
Jokes aside, I think I agree with you if you have a tablet. I used to draw with a mouse back then, so I'd basically sketch on paper, take a picture or scan it, then use my mouse to pen over it. Sometimes I'd skip the sketching/importing steps, depending on what I'd work on.
Later when I could afford a tablet, I mostly left Illustrator/Inkskape behind in favour of just using Krita for most things. However, if I'm making a vector illustration today, I still use the pen tool... and the mouse, even if I have the tablet. If I were to work on something complex enough, I'd probably sketch it in Krita though, and then use the good'ol pen and mouse...
I'm by no means a professional artist, just do this as a hobby though. So, if my workflows outlined here have mortified you; apologies for that.
The workflow you outline is where I started! It's not one I'd want to use any more, now that I can casually make Illustrator automatically do a lot of work for me, then come back in and refine a few places manually. But it was a good place to begin.
As someone who's only ever used the pen tool, I feel mildly attacked!
Jokes aside, I think I agree with you if you have a tablet. I used to draw with a mouse back then, so I'd basically sketch on paper, take a picture or scan it, then use my mouse to pen over it. Sometimes I'd skip the sketching/importing steps, depending on what I'd work on.
Later when I could afford a tablet, I mostly left Illustrator/Inkskape behind in favour of just using Krita for most things. However, if I'm making a vector illustration today, I still use the pen tool... and the mouse, even if I have the tablet. If I were to work on something complex enough, I'd probably sketch it in Krita though, and then use the good'ol pen and mouse...
I'm by no means a professional artist, just do this as a hobby though. So, if my workflows outlined here have mortified you; apologies for that.