Are you looking to transform your sketches and designs into clean vector images using Adobe Illustrator? This course for beginners will help you find your way around Illustrator and the key tools you’ll need to create eye-catching vector illustrations.
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Adobe Illustrator is famous for creating eye-catching vector illustrations. Now if you’re wondering what a vector illustration actually is, we can basically describe it as a type of computer graphic that is made up of points, shapes, curves, and lines, instead of pixels.
One of the cool things about vector images is that they can be scaled up or down without losing any quality. So if you have a small vector image of a circle, you can make it bigger without it becoming blurry or pixelated.
Because of this, vector images are commonly used in things like logos, icons, and illustrations, because they can be resized and edited easily, without losing quality. They are also smaller in file size compared to other types of images, making them more convenient for storage and sharing.
So now that we know what a vector image is, let’s go ahead and get started in Illustrator. Create a new document by going to File > New, and choose what size you want it to be. If you ever change your mind about the dimensions of your document, you can change it later on by using the Artboard Tool.
First let’s import our original sketch by going to File > Place and navigating to the file that we want to import. Once that is done, click anywhere to place it in the project.
From here, you can move it into position and use the Artboard Tool to resize it to the same dimensions as our sketch.
Next, let’s go to the Transparency panel and lower the opacity to about 15% or whatever you prefer.
Go to the Layers panel and double-click on the layer to rename it.
Lock the layer by clicking on this empty space to create a lock icon. This will make it so that we can no longer select this layer or move it accidentally.
Now create a new layer to work from by clicking on the New Layer button.
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Now, let’s learn how to create nice crisp linework for our illustration. I’ll show you how to do this with multiple tools, starting with the Pen Tool.
Select the Pen Tool (P) from the side panel.
Once it’s selected, we’ll want to make sure that the colours here are set to none and the stroke is set to black.
Click on the canvas to create your first anchor point. Then move and click again to create another anchor point. This will create a straight line connecting the two points.
To create a curve, click and drag the control handles of the anchor point. The control handles determine the direction and curvature of the path.
You can continue adding anchor points and adjusting their control handles to create complex shapes and curves.
Now let’s take a look at the Pencil Tool (N) and the Paintbrush Tool (B).
They both work in a very similar way. The main difference is that you can paint directly with a special brush using the Paintbrush Tool, whereas with the Pencil Tool you can’t (the special brush must be added to the stoke afterwards).
Now, simply click and drag on the canvas to create a path. As you drag the mouse or stylus, the Pencil Tool will trace your movements.
To adjust the smoothness of your lines, you can modify the Fidelity and Smoothness settings in the Pencil Tool options by going to Properties Panel > Tool Options.
Higher Fidelity settings will create more accurate paths, while smooth settings will capture more of the natural hand-drawn style.
The Width Tool allows you to manually adjust the thickness of your strokes along a path. Select it from the left toolbar.
Click and drag along the stroke to create thickness variations. It’ll change based on the movement of your cursor.
Select the Blob Brush Tool from the side toolbar.
The Blob Brush Tool combines the characteristics of the Paintbrush Tool and the Shape Builder Tool, allowing you to create interesting and complex filled shapes instead of strokes. Simply click and drag on the canvas to use it.
Try increasing or decreasing the stroke radius to better fill the shapes you want to create.
To use the Live Paint Bucket Tool (K), first you need to select the shape you wish to fill, and then go to Object > Live Paint > Make. This will allow you to fill the selected shape.
Now choose a colour from the Swatches panel, and simply click on the shape to fill it in.
Select the Rectangle Tool (M) from the side toolbar to create shapes for the books and bookshelf.
Once you’ve got all the shapes ready, we can use the Direct Selection Tool to click and drag the live corner widgets to round the corners.
Now open up the Pathfinder panel. This tool has different modes allowing us to combine and manipulate shapes. These will be detailed below:
As you can see, the Pathfinder panel is extremely useful, so experiment with the different modes to get a feel for it and discover what is useful for you when creating your illustrations.
Now once your illustration is finished, we can easily create some colour variations of the image using Recolor Artwork. Select the artwork or objects that you want to recolour. Then go to Edit > Edit Colors > Recolor Artwork.
The Recolor Artwork dialog box will open, displaying your selected artwork and its existing colours. In this dialog box, you’ll see various options and controls to manipulate the colours. Here we can experiment with all the different options, such as:
Experiment with Recolor Artwork to change your color scheme quickly and easily!
To save your illustration, go to File > Save As and choose your vector file type, such as EPS for printing.
Or if you want to save the image for the web, go to File > Export > Save for Web and select either JPEG, GIF, or PNG.
So there you have it! You’ve learned how to create a vector illustration from a sketch using Adobe Illustrator.
In this tutorial, you’ve learned how to use all the basic tools necessary to create awesome vector illustrations. I hope you found this tutorial helpful and that you’ve learned many new tips and tricks that you can use for your future illustrations and designs. See you next time!
Lam, J. (2023). Adobe Illustrator: Illustration for Beginners: Envato Tuts+. Retrieved from https://design.tutsplus.com/articles/adobe-illustrator-illustration-for-beginners–cms-107378