Transcripts
1. Adobe Illustrator Draw Intro: Hi, I'm Kristen Arman, an illustrator and graphic designer out of Orange County, California I currently work full time, is a graphic designer and illustrate on the side any spare moment that I get. My illustration style is whimsical and a bit dark at the same time. Also, as a graphic designer, I think it's become part of my DNA toe love, the texture and tactile qualities of printing on paper. So when I create art digitally, it's important to me to retain that feeling. I do this by using lots of textures and brush techniques. You can find my work online at sites like Society six Thread, Lis, Red Bubble and most of the stock websites out there because I don't have a whole lot of spare time to drawn. I'm always looking for the newest tools out there to make my workflow more efficient. So when I heard about Adobe Illustrator Draw, it was a game changer. For me, using Adobe Illustrator Draw with the iPad Pro is basically like having a digital sketchbook that I can take with me anywhere. But the most exciting part about it is that it's already digitised. I'm cutting out a huge amount of work by not having to transfer my drawings from paper into illustrator in order to vector rise. Um, it's already done in the APP, so let's go ahead, jump in and get started.
2. Lesson 1 Interface Basics: you can download Adobe Illustrator Draw from the APP Store. The APP icon looks like this. When you open up your app, you're brought to the project screen. Here's all the thumbnails that you've worked on previously. Within the APP, you can sort through your thumbnails by clicking up here in the upper right hand corner where the three dots are. You can sort by date created datemodified or the name of the project. If you want to open up one of your previous projects, click on the thumb now and the project will open up. To close out your project. You can hit in the upper left hand corner where it says clothes and then hit again for projects to get back to the project pants. If you want to create a new project, you click down here in the lower right hand corner. The plus sign and you're given the option of starting with one of the pre made size is included in the APP. They have, ah, large photo, a four landscape HD screen. You can also start a new format and you can name it. You can also give it a unit of measurement pixels inches centimeters millimeters. We can set its resolution as well as you can choose how many layers you would like to have . I always go with 20. Um, that's the max, and I always seem to use the Mac's layers. Today, we're gonna go ahead and start out with an iPad portrait. Once you open up your project, you automatically start out with two layers, a draw layer and a background layer. You can add additional layers by clicking this plus sign here at the top right hand corner . You have the option of undoing your last action, adding shapes to your project or bringing in shapes from your library. Here is the layers taco. It basically hides or shows the layers panel. If you want to export your work, this is the export window. Here is your settings window, and this arrow hides and shows all of your tool bars to the left. You have your brush toolbar. There's five different styles of brushes to choose from, as well as the eraser. To select more options for your brush, simply hold down on the brush and you're given a fly out window that gives you the option of a basic round a basic taper basic flat, basic chisel or basic terminal to close out the window. Click on your brush again.
3. Lesson 2 Importing & Sketching: Now that we've done a quick run through of the basic tools, we're gonna go ahead and get started. We're going to get started by bringing in an illustration that I did on my sketch pad of some succulence. You could do this by clicking the plus sign and choosing image layer. Once you choose image layer, you can pick any of these options to bring in an image. To start with, you can take a photo. You can grab files from your iCloud library. You can get files from the market or from Adobe stock, or you can pick them up from your iPad. Today, I'm gonna pick mine off from my iPad. Once you bring in your image from your photos, you can pinch it to make it smaller or push out to make it wider. You can also rotate it by grabbing opposite corners once you have it to the size in orientation that you like, click the done up here in the right hand corner. Now it's been imported to this layer. Now that we've brought in our image and its on its own layer, we're going to start toe copy are illustration and bring it in to our project. Click on the image layer and we're gonna lower it. So pay city, you can make it as full 100% of pay city or 0% opacity. I'm gonna leave it at about 30%. I'll walk you through the rest of these options as we go through the tutorial. Click on the layer again to close out the window. Click on the plus sign to add another layer. We're gonna have this layer be a draw layer. We want to draw on a separate layer. We don't want to draw on the image layer because later on, we're gonna want to be able to go in and resize our succulents. But if we draw on top of the image layer or, you know, have a couple things on one layer it, everything sizes together. So you've got to be really cognizant of you know what your plan is for your illustration and make sure that you have all of your own elements on separate layers as you draw. So to begin with, we're gonna go ahead and choose our round brush and I like the round. I don't really, you know, if I want to have more of a taper. I'll work with some of these other rushes. And for the color, I wanted to be black. Um, and so also use Bring my slider. It's already on black hair, but, um, I'll use my slider and bring all the way down. Um, and I also wanted to be not too thick and not too thin. That line is a little too thin. So one of the hand gestures that I want you toe know is that if you take two fingers and you swipe to the left, it un does your last action and it will do that for the last several actions. So I swiped three times, and it even took away for that import that I did for that. And for my illustration. My succulent illustration to get that back to redo, you swipe two fingers to the right, someone a swipe one. And that brought my image back to that. Brought my layer back three. Brings my line back. We're gonna take that line off again, and we're gonna increase the size of our brush apps. See, Drew a little bit, we're gonna increase the size of our brush just a little bit. Let's take a look at that. Still a little too thin. That's better. Maybe a little bit more. Okay, so I think that that's good. Additionally, I want to show you that, um, you know, using the apple pencil, you can really get some nice fix and thins just by the pressure that you apply on the pencil. So if I go soft, I get a very thin line. If I press hard, the line will get much thicker. So it's very similar to drawing with a pencil or a pen. Soft, thick, a soft, sick. Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and start tracing our, um, succulent one thing I want to show you real quickly. You don't need to start out with an image you can sketch directly in Illustrator Draw. And it's actually the way that I prefer to work. Um, so I'm just gonna walk you through how that works real quick. Let's go ahead and tap on our image layer and you can hide your layers to hide your layers . You can click on and off this a little eyeball icon in the upper right hand corner and to put it back on. Click it again. It goes on. So now it's off. Okay, in a minute. Ad actual. Just do it on this layer. This draw layer that I already started. So if you're gonna sketch directly in the app, I would recommend lowering the size of your pencil as small as you can get it as well as lowering the O pacenti of your pencil. And you can see right here how light this line is and how soft it is. And it's actually perfect for sketching. It's very, you know, similar to how you It's sketch, you know, in on a piece of paper. So if I was gonna draw this succulent or sketch out the succulent within the app, we just do it real loosely. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't need to be perfect. It's fine that you have all these sketchy lines. Okay, so obviously not perfect, but I just tryingto show you something real quick. So that's our sketching later, right? So if we want to then make refine our drawing, I would put in another layer, another draw layer and I would up the opacity of my pencil as well as up the size of my pencil or pen or brush, I should say, um and now you can copy and put a more refined stroke into your drawing, and I mean it just it really feels like you're, you know, doing this on a piece of paper, except that it's just so much easier if you make a mistake to erase and start over as well as you know, you're making a vector illustration that you don't have to worry about vector rising later because it's it's happening as you draw, um, and so then, once you get your drawing to the place, you want it, you just can simply, um, turn off the eyeball for your sketch. And now you have your drawing so you can work within the app like that. If that's how you like to work in, that's kind of how I like to do it. But just for this specific project, I wanted to work off of an illustration that I had previously done. So let's go ahead and get rid of these layers to delete a layer. You just click on the layer and down here at the bottom with the trash can. If you hit delete. It will get rid of that layer. Go ahead and delete this layer as well. Perfect. Now let's go ahead and turn back on our our illustration of our succulents. Um, and just to show you real quick, there's another way to toggle on the visibility of your layers. You just simply click twice. It'll show or hide it. It's much easier than having to open up the little layer options in order to do that.
4. Lesson 3 Outlines, Fills & Settings: Okay, so let's go back and get our draw layer back on here. Fix our pen settings again. I think I think this one Okay, two swipes left to race or to undo. And let's make this a little bit smaller. Okay? I think I like that. Okay, so we're gonna just draw in our succulents real quickly. I just want to show you, um, something that I am conscious of as I'm drawing. Um, if you're going to be filling something in with color later, it's really important to complete your or close your lines, and I'll show you better what I'm talking about. And then also, um, you can zoom in on your art board. That's another great thing about, um, working within the iPad. Pro say like you want to make your canvas smaller because you want to see all edges of your canvas. You can do that by pinching together or expanding your fingers to make it larger. You can also turn your canvas, which is extremely nice. Instead of having to turn your whole iPad, um, or you can zoom in as well. So what I'm gonna show you here is what I mean about completing your lines. So I'm going to fill this in with color later. And you can do that by touching and holding down where you want to fill the color in. And whatever color you have selected for this brush is what is going to fill your shape. So if I hold down my pencil in an area, it will still Now I'm gonna try and fill this lips. I'm gonna fill this little area next. Now, if I hold down my pencil, you'll see that nothing happens. In fact, I get this big X mark, and the reason for that is because it needs to be a complete shape. That's so if I complete the line and then hold down, see it fills, we're gonna go ahead and undo all of this and start again. Okay? Now that's started drawing her are drawing now, keeping in mind that we need to complete our shapes. - Now , I like my lines to be nice and, um, soft and sketchy. Um, like it would be if I was using an actual pen on a piece of paper. Um, but if that's not what your style is, maybe you're more. Um I like that line came out. Maybe you like your lines to be a little bit more, um, perfect or more smooth. You can have that option as well. And so we just show you real quick how to get that done. So if you close out your project and you go back to the project's panel, there's a settings option down here in the projects panel. So click settings and if you go to preferences, and right now I have it as stroke smoothing while drawing. If you choose stroke smoothing after drawing, I want to show you what that looks like. So click down here to go back to your work. Click on your project to open it up again. Now watch the difference in my stroke now. So if I draw that this and I dropped very wiggly, it's smooth it out. That's see that. So a lot of people like that option for me. I like more loose and just a little bit more organic, Um, or, you know, not so perfect. So go back to your settings, put it back for me. I'm gonna put it back on while I'm drawing another setting that I really recommend you using is, um your gesture settings, your fingertips setting. So, um, I have right here gestures on Lee so that my fingers are only used to make gestures. I don't use my fingers in order to draw or to a race. And the reason I do that is let's uncheck gestures on Lee and, um, check drop with current brush. So if you go back to your work, choose your image again. What I found is that when I'm trying to size down there happens. See, right there. So when I'm trying to, like, move stuff on the, um, art board sizing stuff up and down or even just like rotating my canvas, I always accidentally make lions on my work on. And sometimes it happens in such a small way that I don't even notice it. So I just found for me it's just best Teoh, um, have that setting turned on. That was my eraser. So if you want, if you need to erase something back to brush to erase you simply choose your eraser and you can do that. Um, and your research works much like your brush. Um, it can have a larger brush or a smaller brush. So if I just want Teoh, um erase little piece of something. I mean, look at small, that is You can't even see that I did anything. Get back to how that waas perhaps increase the size of my brush and so I can erase much more surface area with a larger size brush. You have the same options with your eraser as you dio with your brushes. Okay, so let's go back to our settings and let's put our gestures on. Lee, back on, okay?
5. Lesson 4 Outlines & Layout: Okay, so let's go back to our settings and let's put our gestures on. Lee, back on, okay. And we'll continue and finish up our outlines of our succulent. One of the things I really recommend is naming your layers. Um, once you have 20 layers in a project, it's just so much easier to find what you're looking for. If you have your layers named in order to do that, click up here where it says draw layer and you can rename that layer. I'm gonna name this round, succulent outline. Now, I also I don't know. I mean it. I have an extra layer down here, so I'm gonna go ahead and delete that layer. I'm not sure what that was for. Um, and then we're gonna also named this. We're gonna name this as our template. Okay, Like I said previously, you want to make sure that you draw each element on its own layer so that you can go back and re size things easier. So I'm gonna draw the next succulent, So I'm gonna choose another draw layer and I will outlined this succulent now. Okay, so now we have all of our succulents drawn in, and I just named this guy real quick. This is gonna be our paddle. Succulent outline. Okay, um, so now we can turn off the illustration, layer the illustration that we brought in, And, um, but I'm gonna do now is move my succulents around and figure out what I want my composition toe look like before I move on to my next steps because I need to sort of figure out my composition, Um, before I start to paint in because I want all of my shadows and all of my highlights to make sense. And so if I draw in the highlights in the shadows now and then I want to move my succulents around, um, there I'll be limited in You know what I can do with them. So in order to move your succulents around, um, or make them larger and smaller. You do that by clicking into the layer for the succulent that you want to transform. So we're in the round succulent outlined layer to transform it. You click trance form and you get this blue bounding box around your round. Succulent. You can make it larger by spreading your finger to finger tips wider or pinching them closer to make it smaller. You can also rotate by selecting the opposite corners. It is a little bit touchy. So you just have toe, you know, get it. You know, keep trying. If it doesn't want it, rotate at first. So let's see here. I'm gonna try that right there. Actually, that rotated a little bit more, okay? And then hit Done up in the upper right hand corner. When you're satisfied with your adjustments. Next, I'm gonna adjust the paddle succulent, um, hit, transform and put that up there and hit. Done. And next, I'm gonna do the triangle. Succulent transform. See, it's a little bit tricky too. Get it to do what you want sometimes. Okay? We're gonna transform or actually gonna bring our round succulent over here. And Evelyn. Now I want to have a duplicate of the paddle succulent to make a duplicate layer, click your layers panel and hit duplicate. And now you can see there's two paddle succulent players. So hit this. The one that was added and transform. And now I have a duplicate of the last succulent and I want this to be at a different Okay, so once you have all of your succulents, how you want them now we can start to
Kristen Arimond, Graphic Designer & Illustrator
