Adobe Illustrator Tutorials

Adobe Illustrator is the industry-leading software for creating vectorized graphics. You can use it to create logos, illustrations, design templates, and textures. In this tutorial series, we’ll cover drawing techniques, how to use effects and patterns, text effects, and 3D graphics creation.

Introduction to Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is a vector drawing program that can be used for a variety of purposes, from creating illustrations and logos to designing web graphics and icons. If you’re new to Illustrator, or just looking to brush up on your skills, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog section, we’ll be covering the basics of using Adobe Illustrator.

We’ll start with a brief overview of the interface and some of the important tools that you’ll need to know about. Then, we’ll move on to creating our first illustration. We’ll cover how to create basic shapes, how to add color and texture, and how to manipulate objects to create the desired effect. By the end of this section, you should have a good understanding of how to use Adobe Illustrator to create vector graphics.

Creating a Rectangle Shape

In this Adobe Illustrator tutorial, we’re going to learn how to create a rectangle shape.

We’ll start by creating a new document, and then we’ll use the Rectangle Tool to draw our rectangle.

Once we have our rectangle, we’ll add some color to it using the Fill and Stroke commands.

Finally, we’ll learn how to resize and rotate our rectangle shape.

Creating a Circle Shape

In this Adobe Illustrator tutorial, we’ll show you how to create a simple circle shape. For starters, you’ll need to open up Adobe Illustrator and create a new document. Once you have your document set up, grab the Ellipse Tool from the toolbar on the left.

With the Ellipse Tool selected, click and drag on your canvas to create a circle. If you hold down the Shift key while you’re dragging, you’ll create a perfect circle. Once you have your circle created, you can move it around by clicking and dragging on it with your mouse.

To change the color of your circle, simply select it with your mouse and then choose a color from the palette on the right. You can also use the stroke tool to change the thickness of your circle’s outline.

That’s all there is to create a basic circle shape in Adobe Illustrator!

Create Texture Effects with the Grain Effect

If you’re looking to add some texture to your illustrations, the Grain Effect in Adobe Illustrator is a great way to do it. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to use the Grain Effect to create three different texture effects.

To start, let’s create a new document in Adobe Illustrator. We’ll make ours 8 inches by 10 inches, but you can make yours whatever size you like. Once you have your document open, grab the Rectangle Tool (M) from the Toolbar and draw a rectangle that fills up most of the canvas.

You can leave a little space on the edges or fill it up entirely. The choice is yours. With our shape selected, go up to the Effect menu in the Menu Bar at the top of your screen and choose to Create Texture > Grain.

To apply the grain texture, you’ll need to click and drag with your mouse across the canvas. As you do this, you’ll see that Illustrator creates a series of dots along its outline (they are small by default).

These dots represent your grain texture and they give off a nice tattered paper look. If you’re satisfied with your grain effect, then go ahead and create another rectangle (or a simple shape) inside of your first one. Go back to Effect > Create Texture > Grain and drag it across the new rectangle.

You’ll see that Illustrator will automatically extend your grain texture to cover this new shape too. This process is very convenient, but remember that you can do more than just drag a single grain effect over a shape.

For example, you can create multiple grain effects for one shape. Do this by clicking on the Grain effect and then holding down Shift (while still holding the mouse button down) and dragging another Grain effect onto the same shape.

With both grain effects active, you can move them around until they are in a perfect position and you can also resize them by clicking and dragging their small handles located in their corners. You may need to make multiple grain effects for one object because it’s not uncommon that the effects you drag on the object don’t look like they’re in the same place at all. So, when you’re finished placing all or most of your grain effects, let’s add a little bit of realism to our image by making some grains fade to transparent.

Before we get into fading our grain effects, we need to first discuss a new layer blending option that was added in Photoshop CS2 called Grain Merge. This works in a similar way to how to burn and dodge work and will help us create realistic-looking grain effects with transparency.

Create Perpectal Rotation Animation with Wiggle Tool

If you’re looking to add some extra interest to your illustrations, why not try creating a wiggle effect? You can use the wiggle tool in Adobe Illustrator to create all sorts of interesting animations, like this one:

Open up Adobe Illustrator and create a new document. We’re going to start with a simple shape—I’ve just drawn a square using the rectangle tool.

With your square selected, go to the Effects menu and choose Distort & Transform > Zig Zag. This will open up the Zig Zag dialog box.

In the Zig Zag dialog box, enter a value for Ridges per Segment—I’ve gone with 10. Then, set the Size to 5px and click OK.

This will give your square a nice zig-zag effect. Now we’re going to turn this into an animation.

With your square still selected, go to the Window menu and choose Timeline. This will open up the Timeline panel.

Click on the Create Frame Animation button at the bottom of the Timeline panel. This will create a new frame animation with one frame.

Now we’re going to add some more frames. Click on the Duplicate Selected Frames icon (the little up arrow) at the bottom of the Timeline panel. This will duplicate your last frame, and automatically give it a new name and duration.

I’ve gone with four duplicates for my animation. When you’re done duplicating frames, go to the Timeline menu and choose Make Frames from Layers. This will make all of your layers into frames—making it possible to edit them individually.

Now we’re going to add an easing function to our animation. To do this, select one of the first two frames in your sequence by clicking on them (they should be highlighted in blue). Then, go to the Timeline menu and choose Ease In/Out > Backwards Out.

This will add a nice easing function to your animation when you play it. You can also choose the other direction if you want it to ease in instead of out. Now press Space and play your animation!

Conclusion

There you have it — a comprehensive guide to Adobe Illustrator tutorials. No matter what your skill level or experience, there is a tutorial here that can help you improve your skills and become a better designer. So what are you waiting for? Get started today and see how much you can improve your design work with Adobe Illustrator.