This image would be fairly easy to complete in Illustrator. The woman’s face can be used with the pen tool and making curved vectors and making sure that it’s not exactly perfect so it comes out slightly abstract. These curved vectors can be used for all part of the face. Even the shadows on her face can be made with the pen tool. Her hair can be made with drawing curved lines. The color in her lips and eyes can be used with the paintbucket tool and the color in her hair along with the color in the back are all used with the pen tool and making vectors. The very background color could be made with the shape tool. The colors’ opacity has been altered and the vector shapes overlapped to get a more abstract look.
I definitely agree. I think that the illustrator relied mostly on the pen and paint tool for this piece. They may have even used the Wacom tablet to create the shape of the woman’s face. The shadows in the woman’s face may be from the curved pen tool, by filling in the shape with gray. I imagine the bright color fills were mostly random, but the illustrator made sure that they overlapped, creating mixes of new colors. The artist may have also used a color template, so all of the colors work well together.
This picture shows the versatility of the pen tool. This picture is nothing more then different two dimensional shapes stacked on top of each other. The shading in the face that gives it a textured look is proof of this. The coloring is simple and yet extremely effective at the same time. While it might be difficult to do, this pictured could by recreated by anyone with our level of Illustrator training.