From Sketch to Vector Illustration - Lighthouse

1. Introduction Lighthouse: Do you want to get good at creating awesome vector illustrations using Adobe Illustrator? Well, you came to the right place. For this project, I decided to combine a variety of styles, including impressionism, line art, and the Japanese Ukiyo. By completing this project, you can learn an interesting and simple technique to simplify lighting in your illustrations. Instead of complex shading and gradients, we will use only high lights to define the direction of light and the shape of rocks in our illustration. We will also use a unique technique utilizing symbols and the symbol tools to add some textural interest to the final composition. Whether you are an aspiring illustrator, digital artist, graphic designer, photographer, marketer, or simply someone with a passion for visual storytelling, Mastering Illustrator provides you with the tools to turn your ideas into stunning vector art. I will be guiding you through every step of the process from the initial sketch to the final touches, giving you a comprehensive understanding of Adobe Illustrator's incredible tools and features. This course is perfect for you if you are new to illustrator, or if you are self taught and aiming to get more confident and effective using it. I am Martin Perine, a certified LOB professional, and instructor with a design background spanning over two decades. Throughout my career, I've collaborated with renowned clients such as Disney, Mattel, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and BBC. Leveraging this extensive experience, I have carefully crafted this course to help you navigate OB Illustrator like a seasoned professional. I am not just teaching Illustrator. I am empowering you to express yourself. Tell your story and create illustrations that resonate with your unique style. This is your chance to create work that is truly personal and worthy of your professional creative portfolio. You can follow along and replicate my illustrations, or you can use the work flows and techniques I show you and create something completely different and unique. There are at least two additional compositions you can choose besides the one I am using in my examples. And roll now and let the fun begin. Your creative adventure with Illustrator starts here. 2. Drawing the cliff's outline: This illustration, I will mainly be using the pencil tool because I would like to capture these nice organic shapes, the rocks, and the plants, and probably we will only be using the pen tool for the more geometric shapes like the clouds and the buildings here on the top. But first, let's just have a look at the pencil tool options that I will be working with. The most important thing is to decide on the fidelity, so whether you want it to be more accurate when you're drawing or more smooth. If you set it to more accurate, it's going to create more anchor points, and it might be a little bit trickier to make edits to the shapes that you create. While if you go more toward smooth, you will have less anchor points, but the resulting drawings won't completely replicate or follow what you are actually creating. And whenever I work with the pencil tool or the brush tool, an illustrator, I actually prefer to use a stylus. I'm using a vacum into us. And this is not something that you have to have to be able to follow this example, because I can show you with the mouse as well. This tool can still be used, so I can follow along these shapes. Quite well with the mouse, but probably not as intuitively as with the stylus. So I just switched to the stylus, and you can see I am a little bit faster and more accurate when I'm using this tool. It does take some time to get used to working with a panablet, where you are drawing on the table, but the results you are seeing on a screen. So it's in two different planes. So that's just like a hand eye coordination that you have to get used to. But it's definitely worth investing in one of these tools if you're serious about making illustrations. So let me start first with the main shape of these rocks here. I am going to start drawing outside, and I am just going to draw the whole thing in one go. But of course, if I let go, I can always continue this drawing. And there is actually a setting that I always like to change when I'm drawing with the pencil tool, and that is the show edges or hide edges. You can see I even have a custom keyboard shortcut F three. So this is something that I would turn off whenever I'm drawing. So just to show you, if normally you draw, you will see the selected parts anchor points. And that just gets in the way. So it obviously helps me to see what is currently selected. But if I press F three, which is the hide edges option, then I can just draw freely, and I can still see the cursor changing slightly, which indicates that I'm going to continue drawing the same path instead of starting a new one. So if I go further away, there is a little star sign, meaning that I'm starting a new line. Now, if I want to, I can always go back to a previous path by command or control clicking on it, and then I draw over sections if I'm not happy about it. I can even change the curve of a section like that. So the pencil tool is definitely worth getting used to, and once again, I'm going back to the settings, which you can access by double clicking on the icon of the Pencil tool. So here you can see the most important thing that I like to have is the keep selected and the edit selected parts to be both on. You can decide what's the tolerance that you prefer? I use six pixels, but this is a preference that's really up to you, so you have to see how it works, and you can refine these settings if you want to. I'm going to delete these two parts, and I'm going to go back to the penstal, the shortcut for it, by the way, is N on the keyboard. So I'm going to start drawing outside here and keep going up. Again, I'm not trying to recreate exactly the same outline, what I have in my sketch that is just a guide. But I tried to stay close to it, and here I let go, so I can zoom a little bit closer and redraw this section, and then I get down there. That section doesn't need to have a break in it and then come out. Okay? I generally looks good. Maybe here. I just want to come out a bit like that. Also here, I originally wanted to go up. And you can see how quickly I can adjust any section that I am not happy with. Maybe up here, we want a bit more sharp angle. And yet that is looking really nice, that outline. So now I can just close it off. Make a big round shape. I am going to use clipping masks, so we will mask out the details that are outside of the circle. I would like to keep this as a nice circular composition. So this is our main shape. Now, what we need to do is to use a feel color for this. I am going to use the same feel color and stroke color. So using this dark purple. You will see why the stroke color is important. So that's going to be important later. And as you can see, I have the stroke set to three points for the stroke. So if I change the color of the stroke, you will see exactly what that means. So that's how it looks. I'm going to just turn the sketch back on and change the color back to purple. Doesn't really make sense at this point purple on purple, but it's important later on once we add the additional shape. Now this is the shape that I'm going to work inside from this point on. So I am going to use the draw inside method. So that's here. I'm going to select it. You can use shifty keyboard shortcut press it twice to to go through draw normal, draw behind, and then draw inside. You will always be able to tell when you are using draw inside by these little dashed corners indicating the shape that you are working inside, and essentially is going to turn this path that we just created into a clipping mask. And we will be working inside that clipping group. 3. Adding highlights on rocks: So the next thing I'm going to do now is to switch back to the pencil tool. And I'm going to change the colors. But first, I make sure I don't have anything selected. So I command or control click outside somewhere on the Canvas or artboard. And then I set the field color to none and the stroke color to this yellow color. We are going to create the highlights, and I imagine this seen to have the lighting coming from the left side, so we will have the lights or highlights showing up here. And the first one I am going to draw up here. So let's just try this. I'm going to follow this line here, go outside, and then come back and then close it off somewhere there. Again, we don't see the selection because we are hiding the edges. But if I press F three, it comes back. Once again, this is the view menu, hide edges show edges Togo. So if I use that, it does the same thing, but I'm just using the keyboard shortcut for it. So I still prefer to hide the edges, but just so you know, this shape is still selected. And what I want to do is to set up a graphic style that I can quickly apply. What I actually need is for this to be filled with orange or yellow and have the same three point purple or dark purple outline on it. Now, you might be asking, why don't I just use these settings already when I'm drawing with the pencil tool? Unfortunately, that's a limitation that we have with the pencil tool that you can only use a stroke color. So even if I press shift X to switch the color, so now I have the yellow as the field color, and there's no stroke color. When I draw my next shape, It just removes the field color. I actually ended up being an invisible line, so there is no appearance on it. What you need to do, and this is the fastest way I've found to be able to do this is to set up the appearance the way you want it. So for this shape, I have already the field color selected, and I'm going to set the purple for the stroke, and I set it to three points. And then I will use the graphic style panel and create a new graphic style based on this. If you don't see that panel, it's from the window menu, you can find it right there. Anything that you set up in the appearance panel, you can save as a graphic style. So now, this is the style that I am going to use, but I'm going to switch back to my pencil tool, and I'm actually going to continue drawing with the yellow color because that just shows better what I'm doing. So I'm going to draw another shape here. Again, this is going to be a highlight, and then just simply click on graphic style. And if I click away, command or Control click away, you can see exactly what I created. So let's just keep drawing and you will see better the results if I continue drawing these shapes. So let's just draw the next one, starting up here, coming down. This one can be a little bit bigger than the other ones. Try to keep it nice and organic, like that. And then outside, it doesn't matter how big the shape gets. And then just select the graphic style from our settings. Yes, that is looking good again. I can just click away. Looks nice. Now let's draw another one here. Again, I'm going to follow this shape up there and like this. And then choose graphic styles. And notice how I'm building things up from the top down because these details are the furest away from us. Anything I draw after, as I'm making my way down, will be in front of it, and that's why these lines already are separating these shapes. So the outline that purple outline that we are using makes it feel like it's in front of the other shapes that I drew before. So once again, like this rock here is supposed to be closer to us. That's why I am drawing it after these two has already been created. So I'm just going to go up here and draw around them. Something like that. Let's go down a bit. And then down there at the graphic style, click away and you can see exactly how that's building up now. We can draw the next one here. Again, I'm going to start outside. This can be a bit thicker, something like that. And close it at the graphic style and click away. So yeah, that's building up quite nicely, and you can already start to see the lighting that I wanted to establish here. Let's draw another one here on this side. Again, I'm following this line down here. I will actually create a little additional line here. And then like that. Again, at the graphic style, click away. It's looking good. Let's add another one here. Graphic style. We can also have one more up here, a small one. And later I'm going to add additional lines as well. So it's going to get even more interesting. But for now, I'm just going to keep working my way over these details. I wanted to have a thicker line here as well, following these rocks. Graphic style added. Okay. Then let's do maybe here. That Okay. I think most of the highlights are in place at least for this big shape here. I think what we can do is to work with these other rock shapes in a separate object. So these ones, actually, we already have the outline here, so we can probably already add this here. So let me just start drawing them. And once again, I will draw the ones further away first. So let's draw this one here. This is one rock shape going down there. I'm going to created like this. Yeah, that's good. Then, let's draw the next one. This There. If you accidentally create them in the wrong order like in this case, this one was supposed to be behind this other rock. Don't have to worry. You can just go into the layer spanel and drag it down below the previous one. So that way it's fixed. And I can actually see this one. It was a little bit too narrow here, so I can always have the path selected and then just go back and redraw that section. It was a little bit too thin. Yeah, it's better. Maybe still a little bit too thin there. Mm hmm. It's better. And if it's too flat here, again, I can just redraw that section. Try again. Yeah. I looks a bit better. So we have that shape. Now we can do another shape here. So let's just continue creating the next rock. Like that. Mm. And then we will do one more maybe here. The. Okay. And then we can do one more here. It's looking good. Okay. 4. Adding smaller rock details and water: We have our highlights mostly in place. We will have a couple of lines that I'm going to add next just to define the additional rocks. So for this one, I am just going to use the yellow as my stroke color, and I'm going to draw over these details. Let's just start maybe start here on the top again. So for this, I would like to get a little bit closer and extending some of these shapes, so there's a line there. Then we can have maybe Here, as well, I did just want to make sure that these lines run completely into the other shapes. So they are perfectly aligned like that. And then here is a shape. I definitely want it to be visible. Again, we can extend this shape here into another line that runs down. Then there is another important line that's running up here into that shape. Like that. Another line. I wanted to come down here. And here you can see that again, because this was very thin. I have to be careful how I move this line just to make sure that it runs into the other one like that. That's looking good this side. Now, let's maybe draw a line here as well. Runs outside. Then we can have another line coming down here, and then another line going up there. Now, in this case, if I want to make sure that these two lines don't overlap, I can just redraw the edge. And also, I feel like this one just needs to be refined a bit. You can also use alter option key on the pencil tool to use it as a smooth tool. That's another setting that I have. And just draw over a couple of shapes until you get the result that you wanted. I'm going to draw a few more lines here as well. Create another rock detail, another rock detail that's running down here. This one can also be extended a bit. So yeah, it's like a mixture of lines and field shapes that I wanted to achieve here. And not all of the shapes need to have that solid outline that we created for the highlights. I can add maybe another line running down here as well, and let's continue adding this shape going down and another one. That is going to be from here. Now at this point, because I'm drawing very close to the other shape. First, I'm going to command or control click away that way, I make sure that this is going to end up being a separate line. It's looking better. I'm just coming back to this other shape here. That I created earlier. I'm going to double click on this to be able to select it. I just want to refine the shape. I feel like here at the bottom, it's a bit too small. So I will actually just use the eraser tool and delete that section there. Eraser is shift E on the keyboard. So you can very quickly cut into shapes and just erase from them. That's a useful technique as well. I will just press scape to get out of the isolation mode. Now, whenever you go into isolation mode, you might need to go back and select your clipping path that you used before and then use the draw inside option. Just to go back, make sure that all the details that you create will end up in the same group or object. So once again, draw inside. I can see the dash lines highlighting this shape, so I know I'm going to draw inside it. There's only a few more details I wanted to add. I'm just going to draw another line here and make sure it's set to the right color. And then I'm going to draw the next one. Come on, click away. Let's draw this one here. Just need to go there. Come on, click away. Draw the next stone, click away. Draw the last one. Okay. I'm going to have water here in the foreground, so that's going to cover up these lines. So that's why I'm not worried about those at this stage. Let's just see where else did I want to have lines. I think probably that's it. Maybe this line can come down here. I haven't finished this one yet. I can come all the way down there. Yeah. That is looking really nice, it looks quite organic. And of course, you can feel free to add additional lines if you want. So it's completely up to you what you feel works best for your design. I don't want to overdo it. I don't want to fill up too much detail there. I feel like that this has already quite a good balance. So I think we can move on to add the water detail now. So for the water, I'm going to use another shape. I'm just going to use a rectangle and create a rectangle right here. And this is going to be filled with this turquoise color, just like that, no stroke necessary for it. But this shape I wanted to make sure is going to go behind these other shapes that I created here. Now, for this to make sure it goes in the right place, I'm going to have that object selected and use command left square bracket a couple of times until it goes behind all of those shapes that we had there. Yeah. So those are the ones that's important, the ones that define this rectangle. And then we just have to make sure that these additional shapes will go behind that rectangle. So the rectangle should be in between the two of these. But what I also wanted to achieve is for this rectangle, which is created to have more of irregular shape here on the top, so make it look like it's water. So for this, what I'm going to use is one of the distortion tools. So there's several that we can find here. But the best one for this, I think is the arp tool, which is shift R on the keyboard, if you want to access it like that. And you can quickly change the size of your cursor by holding down old or option key and drag it down. You can even change it into an ellipse if you want to. And then if we zoom closer, I'm just going to press F three again to hide the edge, but I know that this shape is selected. You can see what I am doing here. I am turning this into water, basically. So very quickly, just paint over it again, using a stylus for this technique, can be more intuitive. I can create this random effect a bit faster. Both drawing up and down. And we can turn off the sketch for now just so it doesn't get in the way. Can judge what we are doing better that way. Now, whenever I use this tool, I end up creating quite a lot of anchor points, as you can see, I'm turning them on. Is probably a little bit too much. So what we will need to do is to refine this a bit. So when I'm happy roughly with the way it looks, I can go into the object menu, path, and choose smooth. I use a keyboard shortcut for this as well. I use F four because I use this quite often. And you can see we can tone down the amount of anchor points, and it already looks much better, so that was before And after, let me just show you the amount of anchor points there were. And then after the smooth made it much nicer. Okay? And we can actually still use the other option as well on this, the simplify, which would just reduce the amount of anchor points as well. And the default setting already worked quite well. I can see I can even reduce them further down if I wanted to. Feel like that looks already better. If there's still some details that I want to tweak, I can always go in and refine it. Now, I'm happy with this result. The only thing that I need to still fix are these lines, because they should be behind the water. So I'm just going to select the ones that overlap. Like these and then use command left square bracket until they go back. I can even group these together. To be honest, it's probably going to make it easier to work with them in the future. So I'm going to use the magic one tool. And with that, I'm going to click on one of these lines, and it automatically will detect all the similar lines that have the same appearance. And now I can just group them together with command or Control G. And we can see now our layers panel will be much easier to navigate. So now I can just move these down below that turquoise rectangle that we have there. So as long as this group with all the lines inside it goes in the right place, it should look much better already. Okay. So now we can draw the other water detail. I'm going to still use the pencil tool for this and start drawing the waves that I want to create here in the foreground. Like that going up here, and then come out, and then we will go all the way around and then we can just create the waves here and join them together. This shape is going to also be the turise color and we don't need a stroke around it. 5. Rocks in the foreground: And then the only detail that I just want to fix here is this part. So for this, I'm just going to go back into that clipping group and draw a shape with the pencil tool here and fill it in with purple. And I just make sure that it goes in the right place behind these other shapes. So yeah, make sure that is filled in there. So without that, there was a gap there. I wanted to make sure that's filled in. So it feels like we have some of the rocks a bit closer to us while these rocks are a little bit further back. And then I feel like this shape turned out quite well. We have the water created from these two shapes. And of course, all of this will go inside another clipping path. But just to finish off this drawing, I am going to also create these rocks here in the foreground. For this, I'm going to just start drawing a new shape, and let's just use the pencil tool again. So all of this can be drawn as a single line once more. Create the outline. Like that. And we are outside the circle. Here, it doesn't matter what it looks like. I press shift x to fill them in. So that's going to be our foreground detail. And just like before, I will make sure that this has a stroke and the fill using the same color set to three point on the stroke thickness. And then I switch to inside, again, just like before on the other shape. So now we can start adding the highlights, and that won't be that here, so I will have a small one around here. This is really just to practice what we've done already using that graphic style technique. I apply it, then I'm going to draw the next one here, coming down. That's a bigger one like that. Graphic style, and actually should have covered that up, or we can select this other shape from the layers panel. And when you have a shape selected, you can use the eraser tool and just paint over it. It won't affect any other detail, the currently selected object. Okay? So that was a little bit too long. That's why I had to go back and change it. I go back to draw inside mode, so I stay in the same shape. And then I can draw the next one. Probably, which one do I want to be closer to us? This is actually the closest shape to us. So I will just have to move these around a bit. This one, graphic style and move it down in the layer spanel, so it goes behind the other one, and then may be another shape here. Going to add the highlight that and graphic style, and maybe just a little bit on this one as well. Okay. And why not add one more here. Let's see how that looks. It's a bit too flat, so let me redraw this. I actually will bring this in front of the other one. My sketch had it slightly differently, but I think it makes more sense having it this way. Mm hmm. Yeah, I might not come too far here for it to be obvious. But I'm going to make sure that those shapes are separated. Now I can switch to just drawing way lines. So the pencil tool, some lines, drawing down one here, and then another one that comes down this way. One more line this way. Come out all the way there outside of the circle. And then maybe we can have a line running down there. And then maybe one more line can run down this way as well. Yeah. I think that looks quite nice as a four gram detail. Now, there will be lots of plants as well all around, but I mainly wanted to get these down. And maybe there's one more detail. I wanted to have also two additional rocks here in the middle of the water. So for that, I'm going to draw this one. Let's start with the bigger one. And I will actually draw this in a way that it's going to be covered up by a wave. So I can go down here. The bottom part doesn't really matter. I will have a feel for this, and I just noticed that we need to actually move this out of this clipping group. So I will turn off the draw inside now, go back to draw normal. So this actually needs to go outside here. I will use a purple three point stroke around it. I'm going to cover up the bottom detail already now with the pencil tool. I am just going to draw a shape over this because there is going to be a wave here. We will create the wave details later, but for now, I'm just going to use this color to cover it up like that. So that stone feels like it's in the water, which is a nice little detail, and let's do the same thing here. Once again, first, I just draw the stone like that. I can use the same settings. So The stroke, I want it to be three points, and then let's draw the wave under it, which is going to be around here, covering it up, and that's just a turquoise feel like that. Okay. So that actually wraps up the most important details for the stones and the water. And we can see how this looks without the sketch. I quite like how it turned out. But our layers is a little bit messy at the moment. But what we are going to do here as a final step is to put everything into a clipping mask. So I'm going to use the ellipse tool and hold down the shift key and draw the ellipse that I imagined here originally. In my sketch. There's the ellipse. We can change the color of this just so we can see it better, maybe to this orange. I think I can maybe make it slightly bigger. Like that. Let's just move it up. I'm using the arrow keys on the keyboard to adjust it. I think it looks good. So now I select everything. That's Commando Control A, and then Commando Control seven to turn this into a clipping mask. So that feature is from the object my new clipping mask make. That's what I used here. And it just turned the whole thing into one clip group. And I'm going to call this one clips and C. Let's see, once again, without the sketch. We came a long way already for this illustration, but there's still a lot of detailing to do. 6. Drawing the waves: First, let's focus on the details for the water, and then we can move on to creating the clouds. So let's just zoom a little bit closer here at the bottom. And what we are lacking at the moment for the water are the highlights. Similarly to the rocks, I would like to have a differentiation there. And for this, we already have this bright almost white color. It's more like a very bright cream color, so we can see the values here. This, I'm going to use this shape. I'm using the direct selection tool. I selected that shape, and I will use the draw inside because I would like to draw within this shape. And just like before, I will use the pencil tool and draw a couple of shapes for these waves. I'm going to draw one here. Like that and fill this in with the cream color. That looks good. Let's draw the next one, which is going to be going up this way. And then come down here. Again, just fill it in with the cream color. Another wave that can run up there. Fill it in. If it gets a little bit too thin like this, we can use the eraser tool and just delete back from it a bit. Also, same thing here. I can maybe this one as well, we can delete from it like that. And we can draw another shape here. But for this shape here to be visible, I will actually need to move this all the way to the top because remember we have these additional shapes that we created here and they were overlapping each other. I have to have that highlight a little bit further out. The same thing here, if I want to have a wave detail like this. I have to make sure it's also placed on top of those other details there. I'm just going to move that down a bit using the arrow keys, just to have a bit of separation between the shapes. And maybe one more detail like that. Fill it in with white, also put it on top of that. There, and then some more here. Some random shapes like that. And I feel like the rest I will just draw as lines. So I'm going to draw this one first using the pencil tool. I will just draw that line here. And I will probably use the same three point thickness, or maybe two point thickness on this one, just to see how this looks if I turn off the sketch. Yeah, I feel like two point will be enough for the thickness here. And I'm going to make sure that this also has a round cap. So if I zoom closer, you can see the round cap now on this. And I save this is a graphic style and rename it as waves. I think that looks quite nice. And I actually want to break these lines up a bit. So I'm going to hide the edges for now and maybe even the sketch just so we can see what we are doing. And I'm going to use the eraser tool. Now, the eraser tools size can be adjusted with the square bracket keys. So you can make it smaller or bigger. I actually want it to be quite small for this technique. And what I'm doing here is I'm going to eat away from this line, so I will just cut into it in a couple of different sections like that completely, irregularly. I can make the brush even smaller if I wanted to, and I feel like that looks already quite good. Let's just zoom out a bit and see how this feels. Now we can turn the sketch layer back on. And then let's switch back to the pencil tool. I'm going to draw this longer shape here. Runs all the way across the illustration. And here it is overlapping that other shape. If I use the outline view, I can see it. This other shape that we have created earlier. Now, this doesn't need to be here, so I'm just going to delete from it. With the pencil tool, having that shape selected, I can quickly redraw that, so it doesn't overlap this shape is looking already better. Now let's turn off the sketch and select this line that we just created, and then using the eraser tool just like before. I can cut into this certain areas. Some parts can be a bit bigger gaps like that. In other areas, it can be a bit closer. I feel like that is looking quite nice. So it's a nice continuous line. It just has these little divisions in them. And I'm going to go back to draw normal now, so I don't want to draw inside this shape. I will just draw normally with the pencil on top of everything else that we already created because I don't want to be restricted by any details. And I'm just going to have the sketch back on as well, so I can see where my lines need to go. So right here, I'm going to draw a line running down in front of this shape, and then continue drawing it down. This way. Then this area here, if I want to refine, I can just bring this line closer to the bottom of the rock until it's perfectly aligned. Again, here can come down a bit. Let's turn off the sketch just to see what we created. We can draw another line here. And maybe we can also extend this one into a line and another little wave detail here. I'm just going to refine this line a little bit here, move down. And also maybe this shape, I would just erase from it. I didn't like the way that part looked like there. Okay, like that. And then let's bring back the sketch. I want to also have a line here. So I'm just going to draw that with the pencil tool. Using the same style as before for the waves and then also erase from it. Let's break it up a bit. And by the way, this other line that we created earlier, I also want to erase from just a few lines into it like that. And let's just draw another line here. Also, I feel like it would look nice if these waves have a silhouette like that. And another line down here. Of course, if I wanted to be perfectly accurate here with these lines, I would go even closer and refine these points, make sure they cover up the edges. This one, maybe we can turn into a shape like this. I can see a small little detail here that can be fixed as well. Let's just try to move this shape in place. Just make sure that this is not tangled up. All right. Just take a look at all the way out. Yeah, I feel like we are getting there. Maybe just a few more lines for the water the wave detail like that. Delete from this. That's a nice one. Maybe one more here. Again erase from it a bit and maybe one more line running up there into that other shape, and we can just adjust this so it fits better. Like that. Okay. So these are very small little details here, but it's important for the overall illustration. 7. Adding clouds and birds: Now moving on, let's create the clouds. And I imagine the clouds to be thin line art, so there won't be any feel on them. And I want them to feel a bit more geometric. And that's why I'm going to switch to the pen tool. So far, almost everything has been created with the pencil tool. So this time we will be using the PEN tool, and I will set it up already before I draw with it. Two point thickness and this dark purple color. So let's get started. We click outside here, and then click and drag to define the first curve. Then command click outside or control click outside, to be able to start a new path. Let's just draw this line up here. This time, I would like to continue the same path. So I'm going to alter Option, click on this previous point to create a corner point. As another line, Alter option, click again and go up there and command control click away to finish that line. Again, here we start a new one, click and drag. Alter option, click. Then here we need to create a curve that we won't be able to fit just simply using one handle. We need another handle coming out from here as well. Now, this is something you can set up already before drawing the curve. If you hold down the alter option key, you can drag out a handle in this direction. And then when I click and drag, you see it already works the way it's supposed to. Now, this time, I just alter option, click, and then click and drag, and there's that curve. Command click away or control click away to start a new line. Once again, up here. I believe this one. I probably can do in one. Maybe not. So I'm just going to click and drag here, already have the hand already. Then I can go all the way up here and draw that curve. Then alter Option click, click and drag to draw the next one, then command the Control click away. Fit this next curve. Looking good. Click and drag already set up the first direction handle. Then I can draw this big curve up here. Command click away to start a new one, and then just draw a simple line in there. So that's looking quite nice already. Let's move on to this side, we draw the first shape here. The next one, by the way, I'm going to old click and drag here to create the bigger shape like that. Old click, click and drag, Old click click and drag. Then come on, click away because I'm starting a new line. I will just start from here to there. Old click and then click and drag to go all the way outside. Okay. And that's all the clouds we needed. Now, I think we can also draw the birds because they pretty much are created the same way. So I'm going to use the pen tool, click and drag. Old click, click and drag. If there was a lot of birds, I would probably work with them a little bit differently. I would use a scatter brush or something like that. But I feel like there's only a few of them, so I can just draw them very quickly and try to stay true to the sketch. Have variety. I'm not repeating exactly the same thing. So it looks a bit more organic. Maybe some of the birds can even have a different color. For now, I'm just going to use the same purple color. That one more here. Okay. And just two more on the other side. Now, one thing that I forgot to set is to have round joins and caps on these shapes. Actually, the caps are already set up, but the joins are not round. I think that would actually work better in this case. This is a little bit too big this bird. I'm just going to make it smaller. Feels too big. Even this one, feel like it feels way too big compared to the other ones. Yeah, I think that looks better. So if I just select these birds quickly, I can just highlight them here in the layer spanel. You can see the most recently created objects. And then going into the stroke settings, I will set round join on them. It's again a very subtle little detail there. So this was before, and this is after. That just looks a little bit better on these. And I also feel like I messed up the thickness. Of these lines when I change their size, because there is a setting in the transform panel. When you are scaling objects, by default, the stroke size will also be scaled. This is something if you want to avoid. Turn this option off. You can access the transform settings by clicking on either the W or the H values, which is the width and the height, or also the X and Y values will give you the same quick access to the transform panel. And there once you turn this off, this issue won't occur. So I'm just going to fix this set it back to two points. I just show you now when I'm resizing, it's not going to affect the thickness of the lines. The same thing here, I believe I have to fix this to be two points and once again, now I am not going to mess up the thickness of the line when I'm resizing it. These seem like very small little detail again, but it's an important addition to the overall composition. Let me just turn off the sketch just so we can see it together. One important thing that of course, I want to make sure is that all of these cloud details go and stay inside that original circle that I created. And I just realized that we added that ellipse inside the cliffs and see group. But that ellipse should be like a global mask that will be used for everything that we create here. And to be honest, most of the additional details that we will do will fall inside this circle anyway. But just to make sure maybe if later I decide to add the sky color, for instance, or additional details around the edges like flowers, and we want to make sure they stay inside this. The best thing to do is to create this global mask. And this is a technique that I often utilize in Illustrator. So for this, the easiest thing to do is to create a new layer and just call it mask. I usually call it with capital letters like this, mask. And then let's drag the original shape that we created. So this ellipse and drag it into that layer. Now, once it's a single object within an empty layer, you can go to the panel options while having it selected, so panel options, and there you will find the make clipping mask option available. So this only works if there's nothing else in that layer. So a new empty layer with a shape inside it. When you say make clipping mask, then it's going to be turned into that. And what you need to do next is to drag anything inside it that you want to use for your illustration and keep visible only within that shape. So in this case, the cliffs and see if I just drag that in here into the mask layer, it already gets affected. And then what I originally called illustration, I can rename this to clouds and birds, just to see if I turn off the visibility, we can see how that looks. So this is another group. We can just drop inside the same layer. And it's very small little thing that happens here. So basically, we are hiding anything outside of the circle again. By using that clipping mask. But immediately, the structure of our illustration got so much better. So we have two main groups right now, cliffs and Sea and the clouds and the birds, and we can actually have the clouds and birds above. It just makes more sense. That's the way we see the illustration. 8. Drawing the lighthouse: 's time to focus on the structures in the illustration, the lighthouse, and the little house next to it. And for these, I will mainly be working with shapes. Since these are geometric objects. It makes more sense to use these tools, and I'm actually switching to working with my mouse. I prefer to use the tablet for more organic shapes when I use the pencil tool. But when it comes to shapes, I feel like I'm more precise working with the mouse. So the first thing that I would like to show you is a useful tool called the rectangular grid tool. With this one, we can create something like a pattern. So you can see when I click and drag, it starts drawing with whatever I have set up. I'm using the dark purple color as my stroke color. But before I let go, I can use the up and down arrow and left and right arrows to change the divisions within this. So if I go all the way down to a single square, I can hold down the space bar and position it near the bottom of the lighthouse, just like that, and then use the up arrow to create the divisions. And it's going to create these equal divisions like that. So that's what I wanted here. And for the thickness of the stroke, I'm going to use two points, just like the clouds, so the same thickness. And now that this is ready, we can use the free transform tool. And for the free transform tool, there is actually the perspective distort that I would like to use with which we can just drag these corners on the top and create the shape that we need. So that is looking already good. Now, we also need a similar shape here for the railings. I imagine this to have little lines inside it as well. For this, again, I'm going to use the same rectangular grid tool. Click and drag. This time, I will press down arrow until I get a single rectangle and then use right arrow to create the divisions horizontally. I want to have something like that. That looks quite good. This time, I want to have a bit of an arch in this. To create the illusion of a cylindrical shape here, For this, I'm going to use the envelope distort object, envelope distort, Mk warp, and then arch is probably the best option. We can also have only an arch on the top. But I feel like arch will work nicely, and it's a very small percentage of band like 8% is already going to work well. But I'm just going to show you what happens if we increase it. Yeah. Like I said, I feel like it doesn't have to be too much. Maybe 10% is good. So let's click, Okay. All right. That is looking quite good already. I'm just going to draw another rectangle. And make the fill on the purple color. I will also add a bit of roundness on the corners here. For this shape as well, I will use the same envelope distort make with warp, and I will use the same settings or maybe a little bit less like 6%. Click Okay. Now, what we can do is to select all of these together and then horizontally align them to their center point. And that is looking already quite good. Let's see this without the sketch. Yeah, I like how this is coming along. I wanted to have a window here, but maybe we can have multiple windows. I'm just going to draw a window outside here. And for this, I'm actually going to use white fill. So I just double click on the Swatch, go all the way up to white. And then I will have a purple outline to point thickness, and then use the pen tool, hold down alar option key and drag this detail up. And here's another use for shortcut. While you are holding down the altar option key to create this transformation, turning a straight line into a curve line. If you hold down the shift key as well, then you can have the direction handles nicely set to the vertical line. So this way we can create a perfect arc on the top. Same thing would work here on the side as well. Again, if I hold down the shift key, I can do this. But obviously, I only wanted it to appear on the top. So we created this shape very quickly. I can resize it, and place it here. And see the reason I edit the white field is to be able to cover up the lines behind it. I can maybe have one more of these further down there. I think that's going to look good. Let's see without the sketch. We could even have these a little bit more irregular, one on the left side, one on the other side, we could even make them smaller. So one there, and then one here, even in the center, maybe and then one at the bottom. Yeah. I think that looks quite good. Just to make it more even, I will move this up a bit. And since we already have this shape, let's just utilize it one more time. I drag it up here, make it bigger, and I will turn back my sketch layer. And as you can see, this shape can be used one more time here. And potentially, we could also use a similar shape for this one here on the top. So I'm just going to duplicate it one more time. But for this, I'm going to select the bottom to anchor points with the direct selection tool, and holding down the shift key, I drag it all the way up there. Okay, so that will work well for the top of the lighthouse. And this time, I'm going to use the yellow color as the feel. And I just noticed that we lost that other shape there, so I'm just going to redraw this quickly. So we have another shape here. Maybe coming all the way down. And for this one, we don't need a field color, but this needs to be on top. And I would prefer if these lines don't interfere with the rail link. I'm just going to check if I can have it set up the right way. So we have it exactly aligned to those details. And then we can make this a little bit bigger. Like that. Let's see this without the sketch. Yeah. It's looking quite good. Now one little detail that I wanted to add here is to have some depth on this section here, so I'm just going to draw a triangle. Like that, fill it in with purple. And yes, that looks close to what I wanted. Maybe this can come up a bit higher, and that point can come down a bit closer to this point here. Again, if you want to be very accurate, you can line this up perfectly. I feel like that looks good already. So it makes it feel like it wraps around the lighthouse, and we can use the reflect tool, press on the keyboard. Find a center point somewhere, maybe this shape at the bottom or one of these other shapes should have a center point. I can't actually find any. So I'm just going to click here in the middle and then click and drag or option click and drag and hold down the shift key as well to make sure it's lined up perfectly on the other side. So since I didn't use a perfect center point, I will have to go a little bit closer and drag this up until it's lined up. Like that. Okay, that looks good. So let's see without the sketch. Yeah. That feels like it wraps around that shape more now. And I'm just going to put a small little detail on top of the tower, just copy one of those windows. Again, I'm trying to line up all of these perfectly to each other. Select these center align them, and then this one can have the same colors like that. And then for the actual light, I'm just going to use a circle. And it probably can have the same color like that. Once again, let's just line these up, all of them together. Center line. Maybe these windows can also have fills instead of strokes, so I can just fill them in with purple, and maybe remove the outline from them. Yeah, I like the way that looks. Now, one little detail that we need to fix is to make sure that the rocks are in front of the lighthouse. I'm going to select all the details that we use to create the lighthouse, group them together, rename it to lighthouse, and then move it under the cliffs and sea. Let's take a look at this from a distance. That looks good, and now we can move on to draw the other smaller house. 9. Drawing the lightkeeper's house: This detail will be very simple to draw, and it can be created in many different ways. But I'm just going to start with a rectangle. So let's draw this rectangle first. We will use the outline or stroke with two points just like before, and then to create that tip there, I will add a point in the center. Doesn't even have to be perfectly in the center, something like that, then use the direct selection tool. We just drag it up. And then we can just duplicate this shape, place it here on the right side. Then I'm going to use the scissors tool. And cut here and here, since we only need this right side of it. And then before joining them together, I'm just going to make sure that these two shapes are aligned on the top. So they should be straight when I connect them. So I connect this point to that. That looks good, and then we need this point connected here. And then I'm just going to select all of these shapes, make sure that their stroke settings are set to round caps and round corners. So that rounds up everything nicely. Then let's draw another shape, which could be the door down here. Maybe we can round this down a bit, like so, set this to be a fiel. And it can be down there. I will move everything behind the heels, so they will be hidden behind that. We can also have a little window here created maybe on that side as well. Have a window using the same settings as these other shapes. So I'm going to use purple to points and round joins and caps. There's a window. The door maybe can be orange fell. So I'm just going to set that up with orange. And I also have this outline around it. I think it works well with two points. And I will use the same detail for the chimney. I'm just going to put that there without the roundness Let's create a thicker chimney like this. And if I want the roof to be filled, what we can do is to have these lines selected, the ones that we created for the outlines, and then use the life paint bucket tool. K is the shortcut for it, and then we can just select the color we want and fill it in quickly like that. That's it that I want it here. Maybe we can just have another division line in the building here. Make it look like there is like a wooden structure. We can also have a little detail coming out here and then going back just to have some sense of the roof on that side. And then we can just select all of these things together. Group them. Let's call it house, and then put it underneath the cliffs and sea. Once again, just to make sure it falls in the right place, and let's take a look at this without the sketch. And that looks good. The only thing is this line here is a line to the clouds. I'm just going to drag this up a bit like that. And then maybe we can also have another window. So I'm just going to copy this one from here, and we can place it down on the other side, maybe around here. Let's just move this down a little bit more like that. And maybe this point can be also moved a bit to the right just so everything is nicely aligned. Okay. Let's take a look at this from a distance. Yeah, I really like how this turned out, and everything is nicely organized. We have our house. We have our lighthouse. Let's just add one final detail for the lighthouse. I just thought about adding some light coming out of it. So I'm going to use the yellow color no feel and the stroke two points, and also have round joints and round caps. So now that I have this set up, I can just come on, click away. Draw the next one. There another light, trying to keep it random. Maybe this one can come this way a bit more, and then maybe we can have one more coming out this way and one here as well. Try to keep it evenly spread out. And then what I'm going to do is select all of the and all of these on the left side, group them together, and I'll call these lights, and I will actually put it inside the lighthouse group, so I can turn it on and off. And have it selected. I'm going to use the eraser tool and just quickly cut into it in a couple of different parts. Just cut here, there, there. And there just to create the similar style to what we have on the waves. Again, it's for consistency. Let's see how this looks from a distance. Yeah. I think that works really well. It's a subtle little detail again, but it adds to the overall composition. 10. Creating Art Brushes for the plants: It's time to add some vegetation, the plants around the rocks and also in the center. So for this, I'm again, going to use the stylus, and I will be using mainly the pencil tool and also the brush tool. I will show you what's the difference and why I like to switch between these two. So first of all, let me just zoom a little bit closer. Let's just say this plant here. I'm going to draw with the pencil tool. Now, I am going to double click on the tool itself. And for this particular drawing, I'm going to turn off the keep selected option because I don't want to keep redrawing each path. So I want to draw individual parts every time I let go the stylus. I'm going to click. The rest of the settings, I think should work. And I'm going to draw a line here in the middle. Now, this should be two point in terms of thickness. So I'm just going to select this and set it up to two points. Think also the stroke setting, I'm going to use round cap and round joints. We can maybe even save this as a graphic style. So I'm just going to set it up and call it plants. Okay. So that's our prototype line that we created. And now we can use the pencil tool, and it should remember the settings that we had before. Just going to zoom a little bit closer. And I'd like to start at the bottom. So I draw the first leaf. Let's try this again. Okay? So here's already an issue. It tries to close this shape where I don't want it to be closed. So we have to also turn off the close parts when ends are within option. I'm just going to turn it off, and I'm going to start drawing these shapes. One more time. So first leave, second, third, I'm trying not to go over the center line, but if I do, I can obviously fix that. And of course, like always, there is a way to simplify our work. Once I have one of these plants ready, I show a big time saver. There is a prototype plant. We can again think of this as that. I really like the way this looks and I like the style of it. Maybe this leaf in the center can go a bit higher, and also maybe we can just refine a bit the path since we will be using this as template. So something like that. That looks already much better. And then I feel like there's a few leaves that needs to be just adjusted a bit like that line there. And this one we can just erase back from a bit. Even this one can just delete a bit from the end points. Drag it out here. Okay. Now, I don't want to spend too much time refining this. Feel like it is looking good already. Yeah, I think that has enough variety on it to make this work. Maybe this line in the middle can be just a little bit further down, and this one can come down as well. Let's just drag this down here. So closer to the other leaves. Okay. So what I would like to do? And for this, I'm going to turn off the sketch, so it just doesn't get in the way. So we can take a look at this. Yeah, it's looking good. So I would like to just lock everything on our illustration for now. So it makes it easier to select everything else. So I'm going to select all of these details, and it shouldn't select anything else. And I'm going to group this together. So that's our first plant. And then I will use the brushes s panel. If you don't have this, just go to the window menu, choose brushes. And then what you can do is to drag and drop the whole plant in there. Now, this time, we will turn this into an art brush. The advantage of an art brush is that we can actually draw with it. The only thing is that if you create an art brush which is already on an angle, it doesn't really work as well. It will be hard to control it. So what I recommend to do is before you create your art brush to create a duplicate of the shape that you created and just set it up horizontally. So something like that. Now, let's drop it in. Choose art brush. Already is looking good. So that arrow there tells us that what is going to be the direction in which we can draw this. I think that makes sense. That's a good direction. By default, it's going to stretch this shape to fit the stroke length. So whenever we are drawing, it's going to fit to that size. So let's try this out. I am going to use the brush tool that's B on the keyboard. So it's not the pencil tool, it's the paint brush tool, because this is the one that can use these custom or unique brush presets that we create. So if I draw one here, there you go, we already have another plant. Because I drew it roughly in the same size, it looks quite similar. But let's see what happens if we draw it smaller. So it already looks very different. If I draw it longer, again, it's going to stretch around it, or if I draw it in an angle, again, it will look different. There's going to be variety that we can introduce with this, but I wouldn't use the same plant next to each other. I will probably do another one here on the left side, maybe around there, and I even use this around the edge just to create a bit of that circular shape. I don't want it to be too obvious. Yeah, something like that looks good. Maybe a bit closer. I like this because I can redraw it very quickly. Yeah. I think that looks good. However, we also have to think of how plants grow. So we want to stylize, but at the same time, also be realistic. And plants always grow upwards. If there is nothing in the way, so if there is no obstruction, they prefer to grow upwards. So that's just something that we have to keep in mind. But I think that one looks good there. Maybe let's draw another one up here. And then we can maybe draw one more here at the bottom as well. That looks good, and then a smaller one maybe here. Now, if I go back and double click on this brush, I can also change the settings and choose scale proportionately instead of stretching. That way, is going to look slightly different. So if I zoom back, now if I draw a smaller one, it's going to be small instead of being stretched. So that's also an option that we can go for. The only issue is that if I draw it really small, of course, the thickness of the lines will change. So I actually prefer it to be stretched because I want to keep the thickness of the lines the same. So what we can obviously do is have a plant drawn maybe here. But then what we can do with this is to place it inside the cliffs layer. So if I just drag it down and move it in there, I believe it has to go underneath that rock like that. So that's already looking quite different. And I think I'm not going to do more of the same plant. Instead, I'm going to draw a different plant now. Again, first, I start with the prototype. I'm going to use the brush tool now. And with the brush tool, I'm just going to choose this default touch calligraphic brush with which I can draw slightly differently to what I've done before. So this one utilizes the pen pressure. So the harder I press on the tablet, the thicker the line will get. It's essentially a single path, but with variable width applied on it. So that's a cool way of drawing. I'm using the same color. This time, I'm going to again draw the stem in the middle, and then I'm just going to draw a few leaves out of this. Again, I could draw some thicker ones, some thinner ones. Like that. Yeah, I think that looks like a good variety. Maybe maybe this one, I'm going to delete and draw again. Mm. And maybe this one as well I'm not happy with. I'll just draw one more there. Okay. And this maybe can be slightly longer. Also this one. I can drag down. Just refining it a bit more. That looks quite random to me. Now, let's again set it up sideways like that. Let's take a final look at it, make sure that we are happy with every detail. This one can be a little bit longer, that one can be a bit and this one can be as well. And now let's group this together, and then let's drop it into the brushes. Choose art brush, same direction, again, stretch, turned on. Okay. We can even delete this original one. And then using the brush tool, if we now select that new plant, we should be able to draw that. So let's try to draw one here. Yeah is looking good. Quite nice. And let's go on the other side. Draw another one. We can move it down a bit. 11. Adding more plant details: Of course, you don't have to stick to using the same color, even though the brush was defined with this purple color. Once you have it in place where you wanted it to be, you can just expand it, go to object, expand appearance, and then it's a fully editable object. You can even use the pathfinder unite. So it turns into a single shape, and we can use maybe reflect, just to reflect it, go the other way. And now we can easily change the field color on it, maybe to this. And I would like this to go behind the cliffs and the sea. So I'm just going to drag it there. So it grows out from behind it. So that's looking good. And if you want to have more variety in terms of the shape, you can even introduce tools like the puppet warp tool, which is joined together with the free transform tool. If you select this, it will create these pins, but you can remove them by pressing delete. Just define your own pins, so I will put one at the bottom, one on the top, maybe one in the middle. And then you can see how easily, we can adjust the shape, basically set it up in whatever angle we wanted to. So that looks really good and different from the other one on the other side. I'm just going to use the brush tool again and still using the same preset that we created. I'm going to draw another one here at the bottom, and just set this up a little bit further down. Can even overlap that highlight there. And then maybe let's just duplicate this one down here. I'm just going to bring it in the foreground, and we can place this down here. Yeah, like that. So we have one more detail there where we use the same design. And then it's probably time to create another preset. So once again, I'm going to try to introduce some variety. I will use the pencil tool. This time I'm going to use a yellow color to define our default setting. So I would draw a line in the middle like before, and I'm just going to make sure that this has the round cap and round joints option as well, and the thickness is set to two. That's looking good. Then I'm going to use the pencil again and then just draw a few lines out of this. But what I will also do here is once we have these branches ready, is to add a little circle at the end of these branches. So let me just draw one more here, maybe around that way, and then a few more coming out there. Maybe one this way as well, and one at the bottom, like this. So I'm going to use a circle and hold down the shift key, make sure it's perfectly created as a circle. And then I'm just going to duplicate this quickly and place it around this shape. Command C command F and then drag it up there. Click and drag is also a quick way of doing it. And since there is no fill, it's easier to use the center point to grab it. That. It down, and we have I think everything ready now. Align that a little bit more. Okay. This is looking quite good. So once again, let's just select everything, including that shape there. Let's group these together, and then we can turn it sideways, and then drop it in the brushes panel like before, save it as an art brush, click. Can delete the prototype, and then let's select this, use the brush tool, and then we can go in and draw our first. Plant. Feels a little bit distorted. I think because there is not enough space for it. I made it quite big. So yeah, it's going to look a little bit distorted. Maybe what we can do is to go back and just reduce the size of it down to 50%. And then let's see what happens. This way, the thickness of the lines will be smaller, but I don't actually mind. Maybe 70% will be a good amount. Let's try it again. Yeah, I think that looks good. Let's draw it up here. L et's move it into place. It should actually be behind the cliffs again, like that. Mm hm. I can even have the draw behind option turned on. So that way when I draw these, it automatically goes in the background. Let's just do one more on this side. Yeah. That looks good. And then we can do one more at the bottom here. But in that case, we will have to move it from the back where I created it above the cliffs and sea. Yes. Okay. So yeah, that is looking good as well. Maybe one more here as well in the center. So I will go back to draw normal that way it's going to create it in front. Another one there. Yeah. And then we can switch to the other brush. Maybe this first one. I'm just going to add a few of these as well. One here. I'm going to change this, go to expand appearance, and change the color to green. That looks nice. Place it right there, maybe a little bit higher. Okay. Looks good. And then I am just going to also draw a few little details with the white color. Again, I'm just going to check the stroke settings are still the same. So I'm going to zoom a bit closer here and just draw a few little leaf details here and there in the composition. Maybe draw something like that. Let's draw another one here. Yeah. Then a few little plants here as well, some individual ones filling that gap there. I'm trying to have some variety here instead of only relying on brushes. I want to make it feel a bit more organic and unique. Of course, I can always go back and adjust these, move them around if I wanted to, like this one, can we move up a bit there. We can also use the brush tool with the default brush. So with this one, I can just make again slightly different details. I might be a bit too thick, something like that. Let's try to fill in some details here and there. I'm trying not to be repetitive. Can have some coming out here to, I will do draw behind because I want to keep those edge details still visible. Let's do some here at the bottom as well. Now, in this case, we will have to use draw in front. Maybe once we have this drawn, we can just move them behind those details so we can select them. These few lines that we created. These ones group them together and then move them down and place it inside the cliffs and sea, and within that, it needs to go down just above these details here. So yeah, before it was in front, now it's behind. That's where it separates better from the rocks. Okay. And I feel like there is enough detail now, but of course, you can keep adding more of these and you can spend more time refining them. But as a general idea, you can see how you can introduce variety using a couple of brush presets and variation of the tools, the pencil, and the brush tool. 12. Adding texture with Symbol Tools: There's one final little detail that I wanted to have here, and it's similar to adding texture to the illustration. But this time instead of using brushes, I'm going to utilize the symbol tools. So first of all, the texture itself is going to be very simple. It's just going to be a little circle or dot. So I'm just going to zoom closer, and it's going to be filled with this cream color. So just a simple dot like that. If we look at it from a distance, it's just a little spec, maybe even smaller. It can be even smaller, something like that. Let's take a look. Yep. I think that's going to work quite well. And then select this and then go to the symbol spanel, which, if you don't find, it's under the window menu symbols. And once this object is selected, just click on the new symbol option here, and I'm going to call it spot. I will call it White. Spot actually like that. Click Okay. Now, the symbol is created, and now we will be able to use the following set of tools. These are the symbol tools, which you can find here. Now, whenever there's lots of variations on a tool, it's good to expand it out into a floating tool palette. So I can click on this icon here, and then we have all of the tools quickly available. Now we can select the first tool, which is the symbol sprayer tool. And with this, we can start drawing these. As you can see, I'm actually just painting around and dropping those little spots all around. And what we can do is to paint over the illustration. I mainly want these to show up on the rocks, but I will also draw over the water. So let's just keep adding a bit more here. So on the water as well. And by the way, if you press F three, which is my custom shortcut for hiding the edges, then you don't have to see that bounding box. So when you let go, you can actually just see the dots themselves. I'm going to add a little bit more here in the foreground, a bit more in the center, a bit more around this side, left side as well on the top. And just some more here on this rock as well, some more on the water. Yeah, that is looking quite good already. You might be asking, why are we doing it this way? Well, one of the most important reasons to use this tool is because it creates a single object in the layer spanel. So it's much more organized. So it's not lots of little dots all around scattered throughout the artboard and filling up a layer spanel. But it's just a single object. Then if you feel like a few of the dots went in the wrong place, what you can do is to switch to the symbol shifter tool. As a second tool with which you can easily just heard and move these points around. So anywhere where I feel like they are overlapping details that I didn't want to touch, I can move them away from it like that. Maybe here as well. We can move them around slightly. Also here at the bottom, we can move them away. Like that. And it's starting to look quite good already. I feel like most of them are in the right place now. Of course, you can also resize the brush size that way you don't affect such a big area, so you can be more specific which dots you want to move around and reposition. And generally, that's all I wanted to do with this technique. So I feel like I have them already in the right place. So let's take a look at this from a distance. So that's without the dots, and that's with the dots. And I'm just going to rename this texture. So there it is. We have all the elements for the illustration. We have obviously our mask, which if I turn off, it will have those details expending or extending out. But that circle, which we created as a global mask for everything in this layer is working really well. Then we have, let's just build up everything from scratch. So first of all, we have our cliffs and the sea. Then we have the house, the lighthouse, the clouds and birds. We have the plants, then we have some more plants, and then the texture. And that's how we built up this illustration from the original sketch, which we can still see. So that's what we started with, and this is how it turned out into the final vector illustration. I hope you enjoyed this, and we covered quite a lot of different techniques here. And of course, whatever you learned from this project, you can apply it in the other illustration projects that we will cover in this course. So have fun, and I will see you in the next one. 13. Conclusion: Well done for finishing this course. I hope you had just as much fun going through it as I had recording it. And of course, don't forget about the class project. Because remember, practice makes perfect. I can't wait to see your work, so make sure to submit it. And in case you like this course, and you would like to learn more from me, then there's plenty of other courses that you can find here. Go ahead check them out now. I can't wait to meet you in the next one.