Using Illustrator for illustration

I've used Adobe Illustrator in the past for logo work, but never considered it for illustrations. That would seem odd to most digital artists, so to be fair I gave it a go over the last two days to see if I could work with it.  As a child I remember our family had a pet duchshund, so here's the quick sketch that started me off

After looking at some reference material I decided my initial sketch was pretty accurate so started the slow frustrating process of making it inside Illustrator.

I found things slower because (A) I'm learning and (B) using the path tools with bezier handles is more work than Anime Studio's simple path curves, however they are more precise perhaps. Textures were added later in Photoshop which is a bit of a cheat.

The following day I decided to do another one, based on the family cat. I know I want to do a more complex and larger piece, but now is not the time, for now I'm keeping it simple.

This time around I had a better idea of what I was doing, it was still not as fast for me as using Anime Studio but it wasn't painful. I'm definitely going to keep at it so that I can be equally comfortable using both software choices.