http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2008-design/working-smarter-with-photoshop-cs4-and-illustrator-cs4

1) Keep drawing. Von Glitschka stated that an artist should always start off, and keep on, drawing. He says that drawing not only helps you plan and decide what you are going to do and where you would like your art to go, but also can be moved to design software to be bumped up to the next level.

2) Be flexible. He started off with a suite called Free Hand that was his preference. But when it was bought out by Adobe, after a while Free Hand stopped operating. He was forced to learn to solely operate out of Adobe. When he did that, he said that he came to love Illustrator, which he uses for his industry.

3) A solidly established creative process is important.

4) Putting things together to create something takes time and effort. Glitschka said that putting things like vectors, gradients, and levels of opacity are sometimes difficult, but bring the overall project up to being a professional appearing product.

5) His building of the Obama caricature was extremely intricate and beyond anything that I could probably currently create. His use of the blending and layers tools with gradients was extremely interesting and I hope that one day I too can do something like that.