Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

Nice Tutorials.

amazing stuffs~

Great post ;) Thanks

Beautiful Imagery. This is the kind of stuff that needs to be taught in schools so that young artists can gain skills in digital media. Art departments need of support to bring technology to young people. THANKS for SHARING your expertise!

wow, are you serious? some of this stuff is truly outstanding!! i am thoroughly amazed by all these talented artists.

kudos on the christian bale one! ;)

Sinoun O.

Nice collection, these are good:) Their pretty much all portraits though, is there a reason for that?

The lady in the picture called “Candy” is Japanese pop singer Koda Kumi
Give her some credits for her beauty….

Wow, Áo dài from my country! That alone makes this article worth reading ;)

I agree with one of the posters. This is not scaleable so what is the point? Is it just because the people who do “vexel” art can’t for some reason.. use the pen tools on Illustrator? Hah.

Also, these are all traces of images. How can you say they are artists when they TRACE over an image? There are a few in this bunch that seems to be artwork created by themselves though.. but a lot of them (the celebrity ones mainly) are allllllll traced. Come on…. same with a lot of vector “art work” out there, they are all traced over!

Please. There is no such thing as originality anymore, but don’t call these people ARTISTS for tracing!

Superb artworks I have admired vexels for so long now, but really it is very time consuming work, I like first one apart and jennifer garner, definitely the best so far in my opinion, Loved it.

Basically: complete crap from people who can’t “draw” without a computer. The only impressive part is that you could find so many examples of bad taste.

I thought this blog was for designers, but I guess it’s for designer wannabes…

My eyes hurt… Unsubscribing.

How do you guys keep knowing what I am working on and need help with ;) Excellent as usual.

Áo dài Việt Nam, I love it, i love my country too.

these are incredible, in my opinion this is (or one of) the best posts you are created, as there is a lot of inspiration to be gained from each of the image, plus the tutorials see to be very nice, i will defenately have a try at some of the.

i’d love to see a collection of vexel artwork on animals (i imagine a parrot would just look “smashing”)

What is the purpose of it all? I don’t see any underlying concept that gives the “artworks” depth. Using Photoshop filters, plugins, et al is not artwork or ingenuity. I almost wondered why people do vexel art when it hit me that they cannot do vectoring.

More and more of these articles are demonstrating what not to do when it comes to design. Unsubscribed.

I like this kind of stuff, I have tried myself to do something vexels, but still I can’t truly master it, but these tutorials will really help me a lot hopefully, really superb post.

I was under the impression Vexel was dead, but the artwork produced really is beautiful. Looking forward to giving the tuts a go.

best da best artwork,be coooooooooooooool

Hi, keep it I like Yann Tiersen poster…

Its Awesome Work

ugly

Mind blowing! fantastic!
Truly Art Lover

Very nice :)
I like most of them

You wouldn’t spend hours in Illustrator drawing little squares to make a raster image. Why not just make real vectors?

Why is the subject matter of vexel art seemingly limited to pop culture foolishness?

There’s a lot of misconceptions in some of the comments I’ve read.

Why not vector? Most vexel artists don’t create vexels for the purpose of selling them, but simply because it’s a hobby, something you enjoy to do. So resizing is not necessarily a problem. Also vexels allow you to include raster elements that you wouldn’t be allowed to use in vectors.

Every vexel is a trace? I beg to differ. Surely there are still a lot of people that follow a reference picture too closely, to the point where it’s almost impossible to see it’s not a photo. (Still, kudos to them for having the patience and will power to MANUALLY and INDIVIDUALLY draw hundreds if not thousands of shapes!) Yet, a lot of people use reference pictures as just that: references. They don’t recreate the image, but they use it as a guide, they add their own vision to it, add elements, change stuff around. I wish I could post links here to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

Just my two cents. Art is art. :) As long as you enjoy what you do, no one else should have the right to knock what you’re doing.

It’s a cool technique but should be viewed primarily as a photo filter in my opinion. That said, I think some of the commentators who are blasting this post for being aimed at “wannabes with pirated copies of PS” and unprofessional hacks, etc. need to relax. I think anything that allows people to express themselves creatively is a good thing, even if its a simple Photoshop trick. Unless someone is trying to pass it off as an original painting, who cares? Who are you to decide what is worthy as ‘art’ or ‘creativity’? And if it threatens you that much, I’d say you probably don’t have much faith in your own art and creativity.

Some of these are nice, but many are just examples of what you can get by fiddling with live trace on a photo in illustrator. Some of them are even just out and out bad attempts at live trace.

All of them would be very beautiful on any… trucks!

That’s a very nice list.. I can’t wait to do one for my wife!

Wake up, men! That’s absolutely HORRIBLE! What do you want to do with that? A carpet? Make a tattoo? Make a paint on your car?……………………….

I think they are amazingly beautiful. I am disappointed reading so many comments by “designers” who think this is not art. It takes hours to make something like this. They make it in photoshop as well as illustrator if they want to re size it like a vector, its a matter of choice. They can use it just like you use pixel graphics, vectors graphics or any other stuff for web designing and all. Also, the sole purpose of digital art is not to just to use it for website/logo/whatever designing. People do it because they enjoy doing it, they like the results and there are many who appreciate their work.

I have a strong feeling that those who are ridiculing this for form of digital art can not make one of such vexel/vector to save their lives. It takes a lot of practice and these artists probably handle the “pen tool” in illustrator as well as photoshop a lot better than you do. Its sickening how disrespectful these so called “designers” are if they are. Probably they are just jealous. To all the vexel artists, hats off! Most of the stuff looks far better than vectors made in illustrator. Its different and its amazing. I love these.

P.S: I am not a great vexel artist, I have tried vexlling people but I suck and have no patience…I enjoy making cartoon vectors in illustrator and pixel art in photoshop but I admit these vexels are breath taking and I can understand how long t must have taken for each one the artists to make something as amazing as these.

Making a negative comment is not necessarily a bad thing. Its called criticism, most adults can deal with it, and it’s utterly necessary to progress.

Sorry to those who are hypnotised by the work ethic, but I really am intrigued to know why the content is so childish. I can’t find a more fitting word for the overwhelming surfeit of idealised images of women.

There doesn’t seem to be any irony in these images: its like we are really supposed to be admiring the flawless skin, and the ‘come hither’ poses.

Sorry, again, but I think its all poop. But just to be clear, I don’t really care about the technique… Its interesting, slightly playful, but doesn’t really add much the world. The same could be said of any technique. Technique always supports content, and its the content of these images that I find so repetitive, so tedious. So much so that I have to ask does laborious technique necessarily result in tedious, uncritical, and joyless content?

The answer I suspect is “no”. But there is nothing in this selection to prove that.

To those who whine and complain about vector/vexel art: Have you ever TRIED actually sitting down and creating one? It’s rather obvious that those complaining must have had the auto trace on and failed at creating a vexel piece.

Yes, I’ve tried to do my own vexel art. It is challenging. I know not everyone is going to love everything posted (I know I don’t) but that’s life that’s art. Sometimes you like it sometimes you don’t. I don’t expect everyone to love the art on this post but I do.

Just because there’s no depth or deeper meaning here doesn’t take anything away from the final product itself.

I’d like to see more kinds of art like this, not just vexel, but illustrative art.

I wish I could do something like this! =[

Really fantastic! I’ll have a look at the tuts…

I did a nice vector also, hihi. please go and see:
http://annarki.deviantart.com/art/His-Infernal-Majesty-34735422

thanks! :-)

Hi, I do these type of illustrations, and just realized the term ‘vexel’ applied to it. derrrr.
isthatart.deviantart.com/art/IamBunny-vector-tribute-154765107

Hope you like this one, It’s one of my best pieces. Thanks