From Sketch to Vector Illustration - Skater Girl

1. Introduction Skater Girl: 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 wanted to create an illustration that focuses on an exaggerated and dynamic pose of a character. I decided to go for a skateboarding scene and feature a girl with long hair, which always helps to describe motion, speed of movement, and gravity. We will use a minimal shading at the end of this workflow using a texture brush. 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 Parma, 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 AOB Imustrator like a seasoned professional. I am not just teaching Imustrator. 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. Roll now and let the fun begin. Your creative adventure with Illustrator starts here. 2. Outline for the hair and T-shirt: I like to concentrate on the larger shapes in the beginning when I start adding my vector shapes. So in this case, I'm going to start with the hair. And there's many different ways of drawing shapes in Illustrator. But this time I'm going to show you a technique that in some cases, I like to use. So instead of using the pen tool or the pencil, this time I'm going to use the blob brush tool. I'm just going to start drawing around the edge, trying to follow this shape, and most likely, I won't be able to do it in one go because I actually like to draw from left to right, especially when I'm using a stylus. So that's just more comfortable for someone right handed. So I'm going to draw the other line here. I'm trying to follow it as closely as I can. And if I make a mistake like there at the bottom, I can correct it later. Now since I'm using the blob brush, I'm not going to worry about drawing over this small section here, I can always add that later. The main advantage of using the blob brush is that even though I did two separate lines, they are automatically connected because I didn't change the color, so it's just blended them together into one single shape. And here is a useful technique. If you want this to turn into a field shape, so just fill the center part of this. Use the direct selection tool, select one of the inner anchor points, and then press back space once and twice or delete twice. That way, you remove the line in the center, and then it just turns it into a field shape. So that's quite useful. Now, to fix the issues that we have here, there's a couple of things we can do. First of all, we can find the anchor points we want to move around and start editing things. But before we do that, first thing I like to always do is to simplify the shape. So that is from the object menu, you go to path and simplify. I have a keyboard shortcut for this. I will be using that throughout this project. I am just going to check what was before and after. Yeah, I can see that the path didn't change too much. I'm just using undo redo. And it actually looks fine. Of course, I could go even further if I wanted to adjusting this, I could go even less anchor points. But I'm going to stick with the automatic settings here. So that looks good. Now what I would like to do is to move this detail a little bit closer to the original outline that I had in the sketch. And when I check this with my direct selection tool, there's actually no anchor point here. If I use the pen tool and I added a new point here, I could then use the direct selection tool and just drag it up like that. That's probably the easiest fix. And that actually looks quite good. However, there is a point here where I can see it's not a smooth transition from this curve segment to the other. So there is a break here. And the way to fix this is to have that anchor point selected, and click on this icon here on the top. So to convert this into a smooth point. So that's already better. But if I wanted to, I could always adjust these handles a little bit further. And I'm happy with the way this looks at least for now, it's going to work. I can select this other point here as well at the bottom and also do the same technique. So turn that into a smooth point. Already looks neater. And then we can just check the other ones. I think the rest looks good. Again, maybe turn that into a smooth point. And if you'd want to do this faster, what you can also do is to have the whole shape selected again and use the smooth feature as well. So that's again from the object menu path smooth. And then once again, we can increase this a bit. And without changing the path itself, I think we got a better result. So let's see before and after, it introduced a couple of additional points. But normally what happens is that it just moves the anchor points around to place them in a better position. So now if I select these anchor points, most of them will be smooth points. So yeah, we don't have to go around fixing them one by one. So yeah, smooth and simplify are two extremely useful features. And I just noticed that this point here came down a bit again. So I'm just going to fix that one more time, and the shape is looking really good all around. Apart from this section here, of course, on the top. To fix this. Again, there's lots of different ways of doing it. We can just select this last anchor point, and I'm going to do the opposite of the smooth technique. Now we are going to convert the selected anchor point to a corner. So if I click on that, we get now a corner, and I can drag this all the way up where I need it. And then I can just adjust these smooth points around it. I might even need to move this a little bit higher just to get a better corner. Here, where I can align it, like so. And then again here, we can do the same thing. We have a nice curve, and then just use the pen tool. I'm going to add another anchor point here, and I can drag that out. Now, this is automatically a smooth point, so I can again adjust it, drag it up. And then I feel like we are getting the right shape now. We just need one more handle on this side. And the easiest way to do it is to use the panel, hold down alter option key, and click and drag the handle out. So we can create this handle, and we can also drag this one up a bit.'s it. And then to get rid of this other handle, we can just drag it down and align it in the direction that we need it. So here we split the handles and just adjust this a little bit further. And now we get a very nice result. I think this one is the only point here that we need to fix a little bit. This is actually not a smooth point, so I'm just going to make sure it is. I clicked on the smooth feature. And it looks much better. Now, one other thing that you can do is instead of using the smooth feature on an individual anchor point or on the whole object, you can just select a section. In this case, I selected these few anchor points here, and then go through the menus again and choose smooth. And as I increase that, I can see if I am getting a better result or not. And this is actually doing a really good job refining my curve. So if I click away, now, I can see before and after before and after, it's much more balanced, and of course, these anchor points will be smooth points. So they look great, and let's just zoom back to see the whole shape. Yeah, I am happy with the way this looks. Maybe this section here needs to be dragged in a little bit, just like that. And I feel like we got a very good alignment all around. We can also check this without the sketch being on. And yeah, I like how this looks. Maybe here, we can just tweak it a little bit more around this side here. Feel like that could be fixed, just ever so slightly round there on that side. Of course, you don't always have to stick to exactly how you drew the sketch. You can make changes to it if you feel like the flow of the shape looks better with those small alignments that you're doing. But yeah, so this is looking great already. Now it's time to move on and draw the other shapes. Now, when it comes to more angular shapes that are less curvy, for these, I still prefer to use the pentol. With the pano, you can be very precise, and that's what I'm going to do here. So I'm going to draw the T shirt now. And for the T shirt, I'm going to start here on the top. And I will draw over it. And I'm overlapping the shape, and I'm actually going to go all the way to this point here. And then I am going to come down, click and drag to create that little curve segment there. And while I'm drawing, I'm going to change the color. This will be this pink color. So I'm just changing the field color for that. And then because I created a curve here, I'm going to just click on this last anchor point to remove that. And then I am going to continue drawing. In this case, I will just draw maybe I think I'm going to make this a straight line here, or if we wanted to, we can click and drag to have another curve, and then another straight line is coming. I am going to draw this straight line all the way down here. Trying to make this shape as simple as possible. I want to contrast also the shape on the top, which is very curvy with this more angular shape. And then I'm going to click and drag and create this next curve right there. Okay. So that is looking good. And I feel like we have just one additional shape for this to work. And that's, of course this part here. So I'm just going to draw that quickly. And even though I don't have to, it's still a good practice to close every object, so I'm going to close this shape as well. 3. Additional details for the upper body: Now, we will have to draw the details that we see in the inside of this T shirt. So here as well, I think I probably would prefer to make this into a slightly curved detail. So for this, I'm using the pantol, just click somewhere here in the middle and start dragging it up. And then we can turn this into a smooth point. Just click on the icon on the top, and then let's drag it up. Now, Another technique for doing this would be, if I go back and just remove this point that I added to use the curvature tool instead of the pen tool, because the curvature tool by default, is going to create a smooth point. So now that I add that, if I start moving this around, as you can see, it automatically is a smooth point. So you don't have to worry about the handles. Just going to set it up somewhere around there. I would like to have the same detail as I see it here, even though I didn't have that on my sketch, I feel like that's going to help to make it a bit more interesting. I feel like this shape could be adjusted a bit later, but for now, I'm happy with it. So I'm going to draw another shape here. Again, I'm going to actually align this shape with the original detail that I have, so I'm going to click on that anchor point with the pantol. Create a new shape, and I'm going to click and drag to align it. And this original point will have to also be curved. So I will get back to that once we reach it. First, I'm just going to change the color just so we can see it's a different detail. And I'm going to click and click and drag. Actually, on this side, doesn't really matter. But we definitely need another handle that's going to define this curve here. So I'm using the pen tool and I hold down older option key and drag this handle out. And adjust it until I get just the right angle on the left side. I feel like that is looking good. Yeah. Now, this shape, of course, can go behind the other detail, so I can use the command left square bracket key on the keyboard, which will move it down in the layer spanel. So I'm just showing you this technique. The command key or control key with the square bracket keys on the keyboard. You can just move them up and down very quickly, and there it is below it. So that looks fine. I will change the color of this to something different. But for now, we can just use this. And of course, I'm going to draw additional details here, so I'm going to fix that later, but I don't worry about this because I'm going to overlap them. So let's just draw also the details for the sleeves. So for this, you can either use an ellipse and try to align it, or again, use the way that we've done before, using the pen tool and then click. And then in this case, I will click and drag here in the middle and then click at the end point and then just close it up like that. It doesn't really matter what you do, the in the in side, because once again, we will move this behind the other shape. So that was the command, the control key, and then square brackets to push it in the back. The same thing we can do here on the other side. I'm just using the pen tool, click and drag. Click and then draw this shape and then command control square brackets to move it back. All right. That is looking good. Now, we will need to draw, obviously all the additional details around here. So now we can concentrate on the shapes that will make up the skin, like the head, neck, arms, and the vast. Let's start with the vast, that's the easiest one. We just need to draw a shape here with the penol. This can be a bit curved, the back and then come down and then close it up right there. Now, this skin tone is the color I already prepared as a swatch, and again, move it back a bit like that. So that's ready. And then moving on, let's do her head. Now for the head, I am probably going to use the curvature tool, and I will actually use the outline of the ear together with the face. And because this is going to be in front of the hair. At least the ear has to be in front. I'm going to define the shape that way, so I will click up here. Click click and click and click again. And then here I need a corner point, so I'm going to double click on this point. So that is going to allow me to start a new angle. I will click. A couple of times. I'm just looking at the curve of the face. I think here we can just go all the way up already and then align it up there. I think maybe if I step back one step, I can go all the way up here or we can just align it down here at the bottom like that. Again, double click because we are changing direction, and then click and click. All right. So that is looking good. Now, the only detail that I need to fix is right here. I'm using the direct selection tool now, dragging that detail a little bit in. That looks good. And then I'm just selecting the hair, and I'm going to drag this point down a bit further. Just to make sure that we get that overlap there that we needed. And I'm just going to check the rest of the detail. And I actually noticed that the hair needs to be on top of the T shirt, so that comes in front of the T shirt here. So I'm going to select both the head and the hair and use command or control shift square bracket to drag it all the way to the top. So that's also something, by the way, you can use from the right click range bring to front if you are not familiar with the shortcuts. And that is looking good already. That's exactly the shape I want it here. Maybe the hair can be adjusted a little bit more. I'm probably going to add an additional anchor point there and then using the direct selection tool. I can even use the arrow keys on the keyboard. To drag this in place and then align it a bit further around there and there. Okay, looks good. The head looks great. Now we can draw the neck. For the neck, we can just do a very simple shape, starting from here. I'm just going to draw pretty much a rectangle. Like that. I will set this to again, the skin color, and then, of course, we need to go back there below the hair. But then we will have to align this to this line here. So one thing you can do is to very quickly take off what you don't need is use the eraser tool, and then with the eraser, you can just drag down, and then you get the shape that you need. For this, of course, make sure you have that shape selected first before you erase from it. If you still need to refine it a little bit more, you can just drag points around if you want it to. I'm going to keep it the way it was. Lastly, this little detail here is supposed to be skin tone two. For this, I'm actually going to draw an ellipse. I'm just drawing the ellipse and then holding down the space bar, I can align it. And something like that, and then use a rotate feature that's R on the keyboard to align it up there. And then this can go under the hair, just simply arrange the layers accordingly, and we got those details in place. So that is looking good. Now, before I forget, we have a little detail for the hair here. For this, again, I can use the Ellipse tool, since we already had that one selected. I'm just going to draw it like that, align it, distort it a bit. And also just drag this detail out. Now I'm using the eye dropper tool that's on the keyboard to get the tool quickly and then click on that shape above. Now, sometimes it doesn't work because you have the sketch layer turned on. So if you turn that off, you will be able to sample with the tool. Just going to bring back that layer. And then of course, this he detail needs to go behind the head. Again, I just did the alignment there. 4. Remaining shapes for the entire body and skateboard: Okay, so now we can move on to the arms and hands. Let's start with this one here. I'm going to use again, the pen tool, and I'm going to start drawing from here because this shape is going to go in between these two existing shapes. So I want to make sure that it goes beyond it. And then I'll just click and drag here. I actually create a nice curved shape. Click and drag. We can switch to the skin tones, and I just continue all the way to the tip of the finger. Then click on this last point, create a little curve here, and then come down here. Click and drag. Click. Click and drag, click. And then click and drag. Click and drag. And the last click and drag. Okay. So since this was a very nice smooth and curved shape, but with also two corner points, I found that using the panel was easier in this case compared to the Smooth tool. I had a little bit more control over how things are going. But of course, it's up to you which technique you prefer. I'm trying to show you various techniques for each of the shapes, I'm switching things up slightly, just so you can see how much variation you can do in ado illustrator. So I'm going to move this shape back using again command key and the left square bracket. Also, I noticed that I didn't close this shape, so let's just go back with the panhol and close it up. Now it's a close shape. Let's keep moving it down, and there it is in between the pink shape and the detail on the sleeve. Now we can draw the additional fingers. These again, probably is easiest to do with the pan tool. I'm going to start behind the existing shape. I add that nice curve there, sharp corner, and then click and drag to create that detail there. Yeah, that looks nice. Let's just close this up. I'm going to use the same skin tone for this for now. I'm going to change it later, make it a little bit darker. And if I wanted to save time, I could just duplicate this shape and rotate it down since this is pretty much the same detail as the other one. I can maybe just distort it a bit, drag this down and then adjust it in place. Okay. That looks good. So we have that hand ready. We can check without the sketch. It is looking nice and clean so far. We have all the details that we need. So like I said, I always like to concentrate on the larger shapes first and then move on to smaller details like the glasses, nose and mouth, and of course, the lines that we will be adding later. But for now, let's just move on to the other arm. Again, I'm using the pen tool. I will do this a little bit faster now. I try to have the elbow a bit visible here. So I'm just drawing that point there. Then I come up to here and then go down. This can be a little bit more angular. Like that. And then this is the other finger which I will draw a bit closer. I just a bit closer here and draw that according to the sketch, Again, I'm trying to align my anchor point to the hand as much as possible. I can probably go up to here. It doesn't have to meet perfectly that part of the T shirt, and then I close it up. So let's not forget closing the path, and then send it back with our shortcut to arrange it, and we have the second hand. So that was easy. Now most of the skin tones are in place. Since we are drawing the skin tones, I could just quickly draw these shapes here, which we will need later. There is one and the other one. This is literally just with the pent very quickly. This bit here can be angled a bit and then close it up. So now we have all the skin tones in place. We can move onto the genes, which is going to be made up of two major shapes. I probably wouldn't do it in one shape. However, since we are going to add lines, it actually could be done with one shape. So we could just do the silhouette of this. And then we will just add the line there later. I think that will save us time. Before I do this, I'm actually going to change this color here, and we will come back to these later, but I don't want to use this color for these shapes because this is going to be used for our jeans. So I'm actually going to select these and change them for now. And we will add the shading later. But yeah, let's start here where the skin tone is. This is a good point to start. And then I actually will use the pen tool again here. So I will click and drag and start defining this shape. It is quite curvy detail. So if you prefer to use the curvature tool, feel free to do so. I'm just more confident with the pen tool for these type of shapes, and especially because I like to go back into straight lines like here, we have a straight line, and I am going to create a little bit of curve here show if I need it. I think I'm actually going to keep this straight. Just have a subtle curve there. That, and then keep this part straight, but then we will start adding a curve up to this point here. Click and drag. Remember, we decided that we are going to do only the outline of this, and I'm actually changing it to this color. Maybe just change it to another color for now just so we can see the sketch better. I'll click and drag, go the other way for the other foot. Go down there. Click and drag. Click one more time. Keep this one straight. And then here we are going behind the other shape. So it doesn't really matter where I put this point, so it can just go all the way up there and then close it. Now we just have to move this down. Command Control shift left square bracket, or right click and choose a range sent to P. And once it's all the way in the back, we can just double check that this shape actually needs to go behind it. And yes, that's looking good. These shapes can go at the bottom as well. So I just selected them too and use the same shortcut to send them to the back. So let's take a look at the full illustration. It's coming nicely together. So we have the main shape for the trouser. And now we just need the shoes, or trainers. For this one, again, I think I'm going to stick with the Pen tool, and I'm going to draw everything first, just the outline. So I will start here. Click and drag. Click again to make it straight. Come maybe up to here and then click and drag to create a curve. Then click again, click and drag. Click and drag and go up to this point here, and then come down, click and drag and click and drag finally there. And I'm going to change the shoes for now to maybe this color? We might change it later, but this is looking quite good. Now, you could just duplicate this and use it there by using the selection tool, old click and drag and adjusting it. But just to help you get used to these tools, I'm going to actually use the curvature tool now instead of the Pen tool. So what happens if we are using this? What's the difference? I can start drawing again, click, and then click click click. Here, I double click. I want to keep it again straight all the way up to this point. Double click to make sure it's going to stay straight. Then click up somewhere around here. I want to create a little curve just like that. Then double click click click. Click and click there and then double click and click in the middle, and that creates a nice little curve up there. Now, if I wanted that curve to go the other way, I would have to double click on that point as well. So it's a little bit hard to see, but instead of this curve, if I double click on this one, it's going to make it into a sharp corner, and then I can just drag this point around if I wanted to and get the right angle. So, yeah, I mean, it's roughly the same amount of time to draw with either the curvature tool or the pen tool. But yeah, the end result looks quite good. And now we just need the skateboard. So for this one, I am going to use the pen tool again, and I will click and drag. Draw the straight line up there. And then click and drag. Click, click and drag, or change the color just so we have something different, maybe yellow, click. Keep it straight all the way up to here. Then click and drag. And then just click to finish it off. So that looks good. Now we can draw with the lips tool. Let's just draw the wheel. First one, right there. Again, I'm going to use a different color just so we can separate these shapes. We can decide what color we want to use in the end. For this one, I am just going to draw another shape up here with the lip tool. Like that. And then for the wheels in the back, I'm going to use a different color again, just so we can separate them. I will make them look darker, send it to the back, and then I can actually duplicate this and put it here on the other wheel, which is automatically behind the other one. There's going to be a few additional details for the skateboard, but that's generally all the larger shapes ready. Maybe one final little thing here that I forgot to add is this inner part of the genes would be still nice to see. So I'm going to use the pen tool, click on that corner, click and drag, click, and then click and drag, and I make sure that this is sent all the way to the back. So it's just a very subtle little detail there. Same thing on this other side. Again, align it to the existing shapes click. Click around and then send it to the back and done. Okay. Looking good. Now it's time to start adding the smaller details. 5. Sunglasses and facial features: It's time to add the smaller details. I'm going to start with the glasses or sunglasses, and this time I'm going to use the lip tool. It just makes sense using the rotate feature, which is R on the keyboard. We can have it aligned. And for this one, I'm going to use this darker color. Let's just try to align it as close as possible to what we need. And then I can use the direct selection tool if I feel like I need to drag it out a bit this way. That looks good. Now let's duplicate this and drag it up here. Maybe make it a little bit smaller since that's further away from us. I can also slightly angle it differently, and that looks good. Now, let's use the pen tool. Remember that this needs to go behind the ear, so we need to make it look like it's coming out from there. I'm going to draw this first shape, come out, and then this detail here goes behind the ear, and then we just have to angle it down a bit as if it's following the angle of the ear. Something like that. Now, when you zoom closer, and I'm going to turn off the sketch here just so you can see it, that if this ever happens that you have these imperfections in your drawing, it looks quite amateur. So this is something you definitely need to fix. The thing here is that if I wanted this shape to go behind the ear, first, I have to separate the ear from the face because the glasses obviously have to be in front of the ear, but then the ear should be in front of this detail. And that's a very simple thing to do. So instead of struggling with this shape here, I'm just going to divide the shape of the ear. So I'm going to actually cut the ear off and have it as a separate shape. So the best way to do this is actually by using the knife tool. And with the knife tool, you can just go over it and cut it wherever you want. In this case, I cut it here. Now, it created an extra anchor point. I noticed at the bottom because it didn't cut perfectly along the edge. So if I take this off, you can see it created that extra anchor point. So instead of the knife tool, another technique you can do is to use the scissors tool. The scissors tools, you can click exactly on an existing anchor point and then click either on the other side of the path or again on an existing anchor point. I'm just going to cut it here. So once again, now if we look at this in outline view, we can see that this is actually an open path. Outline view, by the way, if you are not familiar with it yet, it's command or Control y on the keyboard or go to the view menu and choose the feature there. So I'm just going to switch back to normal view, and this is when you can see it up here. It's a togo, you can go back and forth. And it's a great way to check whether a path is open or not. So as you can see, if I move this path away, it's currently open, and that other path as well, the original other section of the face is also an open path. So these should be fixed. And a quick way to do this is to have the contextual task bar open and just choose join path. So that's from the window menu, contextual tas bar, if you don't see it already. And then if you click on Join path, then you can see now this is closed. And the same thing we can do by selecting that other shape, which is the face. I'm just going to click back here so we can see it. That's the one selected. And for this, again, we have contextual task bar, say join path, and now is joined. So we have these two shapes ready. And the good thing about this is that we can decide which one goes where. So I'm going to actually delete this shape for now. This should be on top of everything. So I'm going to right click, choose arrange, bring to front. So seemingly nothing happened, but if I now draw the detail for the glasses here. Just going to maybe start from here and come down and then go back up. There. As soon as we send this back one step, we can see how it's now aligned behind the ear. And all I have to do just to make sure that we don't get in the way of this little detail here is to move this up a bit maybe up around here. So it doesn't follow exactly our sketch this time, but it's not a problem. I can just align it a bit more this way. If I was a bit more careful where I cut into the ear, maybe I should have cut into it there. It would have worked better. But now I feel like it actually looks even better than the original sketch. So let's just see without the outlines, and yeah, I'm happy with the way this looks. So just a little bit more precise in the way that this detail meets here. Just by dividing this path, we managed to achieve that. And the next shape is going to be very simple. We just have to draw This detail right here, and then sample the color or just choose it from here. And that's the glasses done. So we have one detail down. Now we need to draw these little details for the ear, the nose, and the mouth. These are very simple. Just click and drag. And click and drag again. So there we have the ear. Now for this, I'm going to use stroke instead of fill, so I will press Shift X. And then let's just zoom a little bit closer on this. I want these to be much softer, so I don't want them to be so sharp around the edges. This is actually something that you can access if you have the whole shape selected or this path. So here on the top, you should see these values. If you don't see them, just click away and then click back again, and then they should show up. And what you want is the stroke panel. And from the stroke panel, click on the round cap option. There's round caps, and also I want round corners. So that fix that bottom detail there. I will increase the thickness of these lines, and I'm actually going to use this darker red color. Just make sure that the stroke is selected, and then choose that color. So let's see without the sketch on top. Yeah, it's a very subtle little detail from a distance. It's still going to be visible. But like I said, it's quite subtle. And the good thing about drawing this is that next time now that we are drawing the rest of the details, we don't have to re enter all of these values. It's just going to copy whatever was used last time. So I'm going to turn back the sketch, and then I will have the pencil selected and click and click for the mouth. One shape, control or command click away, so you deselect the previous path, and then you click, click and click, and you have the nose. So let's see again without the sketch. That looks good. Maybe this can be a little bit more in. Keep it smaller, and then let's zoom out. Yeah. We can change the colors later but for now. I think that's going to work. Now we have to also have an additional shape here. I'm actually going to copy the existing ellipse. Command C command F or Control C Control F to duplicate in place, align it. And then we will just change the color of this to the slightly darker color, but make sure it's applied to the fill like so. Yeah, that looks good, but it needs to go behind the hair details, and this has to go all the way back as well. Just like that. Let's see without the sketch. Yes, that looks good. I actually need to have this shape selected a bit and adjusted. I'm going to drag this in until We have a better alignment there. And I just noticed that there's actually two anchor points here. One of this needs to be removed. And a good technique for this is to have one of them selected that you don't want to use anymore. Use the delete anchor point, and then shift click on the point you want to remove, which will try to retain the original shape as close as possible. So this is once again, the delete anchor point tool with which, if I just simply click on that anchor point, it changes the shape too much, but by shift clicking on it, it retains the original shape as close as possible. And then this shape right here, if you ever have this problem of having one side curved, but the other one doesn't have a handle point, you can just use the convert anchor point tool, which you can again select from here in the options bar, or while using the pen tool, you can hold down the alter option key and then click and drag it out. However, again, as you can see, this messes up the original shape. So here's another work around. If you want to fix this without distorting the original shape too much, Then just switch to the curvature tool, double click on that point, and then double click again. And see it's already fixed it, and it actually jumped back to the way it was before. So now it looks great. This shape here looks good as well. I'm happy with the results. This one can come up a bit more. Maybe somewhere around there. 6. Adding smaller details: If we check our sketch, the next bit of detail, what we need is to add some bracelets, and for this, I'm going to use the shape that we created and switch to draw inside. Let's shift D twice, or just click on this icon here. Draw inside mode. And this is when you see that that shape is now highlighted with these dashed lines, creating a rectangle around it that indicates that we are going to draw inside this shape. And for this, I'm actually going to just use the blob brush tool. And with that, I'm going to use maybe the blue color with the square brackets. You can increase, decrease the size of your brush. And I'm just going to draw over from here down there. That looks good. And then let's just use a slightly different color. Maybe this darker one, make the size of the brush a bit smaller and just draw it down. I didn't change the color because with the blob brush, you actually need to change the stroke color. So let me just go back and do this again. Looks good. Now, if I want to do the same thing on this other arm, first, I have to press Shaft D to get out of that previous selection, and then select this shape and press Shift D again twice. Now we get the bounding books around this shape, and then using the blob brush again. And then here I'm actually going to use this color first. Like so. Then I'm going to use the bright blue and increase the brush size and then draw over the arm like that. Then press Shift D to get out of drawing inside mode. Now it's time to draw the details for the trainers. I'm using again draw inside mode for this, and I will use white and use the blob brush, increase the size, and I'm just going to draw over it here at the bottom. Like that. We also need to draw in some detail here. Like that some detail around here. And that's the great thing about having the outline that we can just very quickly draw these shapes. We don't have to worry about the edges anymore. But to be able to see better what we are doing, I'm actually going to add also background color. So the background color, I think I'm going to use this yellow. For now, I'm just going to change the skateboard to have that color. And then I will actually create a new layer. I always like to keep my background a completely separate layer. Put this under the illustration layer, and then using the rectangle tool, I can draw around the artboard and then change it to the color we wanted to use. That looks nice. I'm going to make sure that it's aligned to the artboard, drag it up and then lock this layer from the layer s panel. That way we want accidentally selected. So we can go back to the illustration layer and continue working there. So I I zoom closer to the trainers, we can check it without the sketched layer. I can see that these shapes will definitely need to be simplified. So I'm going to use the simplify feature, maybe first a smooth feature a bit, and then simplify. And yeah, it seems to be fine already. Okay. Yeah, that looks good. Maybe this one can be also simplified. And now we can draw the same details for this side. So let's shift the twice. Let's bring our sketch layer back. We use the block brush tool, and we just want to paint with white. So let me switch to white on the stroke, and then that section there. Try again. Yeah. And then we can draw this detail up here. And that detail at the bottom. Yes, this is looking good. I will also add a circle here just with the block brush. This is quite fast and easy. And then if you turn off our sketch, we can just select these shapes, the ones that we just created, and I'm going to do a smooth on them a bit and also simplify a little bit, just to refine them. And I can actually move this around a bit. Like so. Okay, let's not forget to get out of the draw inside mode and zoom out a bit just to check how they look. Now, we will need some additional details here on the trainers, the shoe laces, which I had in my original sketch. And for that, I'm just going to use the pencil tool or the brush tool with a white straw color. We can start drawing these details. I'm just going to use the default calligraphic brush and maybe reduce the size of the brush with the square brackets. And then I will draw a few details just very quickly. The like that. Then I will draw these lines. I think that looks good. Maybe we can go down a bit more, and then we can do the same thing here. Okay. That looks good. If you want to add a bit more interest, you can also add some depth on the shoe, even though we had a nice outline. We can always come out of that a bit with these details. Just add a little bit more interest. Just paint over it with the brush tool even here in the front. We can have the sole of the shoe come out a little bit further. Same thing here. A very small little detail there. I feel like this is looking already better. If we zoom out all the way, we have quite a nice little detail down there. And before I forget, I also wanted to give her a little earring, which I would just do with this tool, the brush tool. I'm just going to drop earring there. And now it's time to fix the colors. So this shape, for instance, needs to be slightly darker than this. So I'm just pressed shift key on the field color, and I have the HSB value selected. And with that, what I'm going to do is to reduce the brightness to make it darker. But I also like to increase the saturation for anything that's darker than in the original color. And sometimes you can also play around with the hue just ever so slightly. Just going to keep it around here. I think that looks quite nice. Since this is the color that we will be using for the shaded details on the T shirt, I am going to save this as a new swatch. So this is going to be added here in the library. Let's have that selected, add it, and then put it next to the other color. So we know that these are the ones we use together. And then I'm going to select those other two smaller details, this one, and this one, shift click on them, and then assign the color we wanted to use. Now, the jeans I actually wanted to be this darker color. If I want these details here to look different, we can again have even both of these selected, then shift click on that color, and just make them even darker. Since I'm only using this here, I might not save it as a swatch, but let's just add it there still. So we have the darker version and then click back. Let's take a look. So, yeah, I feel like the colors are working quite nicely together now. Maybe here at the bottom. I'm just going to add another shape over there. So I have to be perfectly aligned. And maybe this can be filled with blue, just so we reintroduce that color there at the bottom. And the wheels can probably also be blue, either this or the darker blue. I think the darker blue works quite well. And just to add some more details here, I am going to draw another ellipse. In the center roughly like so, and this can be maybe white. I think white would work quite nicely. Let's put that on the other side as well. And then I'm just going to add a small detail here at the bottom of the skateboard where the wheels are attached. Something like that, which I believe I had on my sketch as well. And then this one can be maybe, again, a dark blue detail, or we can have it. Actually, that probably is a good one. I don't want it to stand out too much. And then let's just draw a very small detail for this to be making it look like it's added here, connecting the wheels, and this can be the dark color just set it behind the wheel, which actually probably is easiest if we select these two shapes and bring them all the way to the front. So this shape actually probably needs to be also blue, the brighter blue detail. And then we can just duplicate these two together and bring them up here. And again, we just bring the wheels above this like so, and this can be moved up a slightly. That one as well. Yeah, something like this. So if we look at this from a distance, this helps to connect the skateboard. If you want to move the skateboard around, it probably would make sense have it selected and put into a group. So I'm going to use the Lasso tool and just make a quick selection around all of these shapes and shift click on this because I didn't want to include that, and just group this together. So now in the layers, it's going to be a single group, and I'm going to call it skateboard. This way, it will be much easier to move it around in the future. For now, I'm just going to keep it there. And now it's time to move on adding the lines and the shading details. 7. Adding lines on the legs: For this part of the workflow, I am going to use these three custom brushes that I prepared. I'm going to select them, copy them into the document that we've been working on. Once you place these lines in, they will automatically show up in the brushes panel. So if you can't see this panel, just go to window brushes. And the great thing in Illustrator is that if you just copy an object that was using a particular safe brush, as soon as you copy that into another document, it will not only show up in the panel, but also will have all the settings automatically applied. Like, in this case, I'm using the tints method for colorization for all of these three brushes. Now we can actually delete these from here, so we don't actually need them to be visible in the document, but it's still going to be staying here in the brushes panel. The first one I'm going to use is this one, the thin line. If I use my brush tool and I start drawing with this, you can see that it tries to emulate a pencil. This is slightly different to the default brushes that you can find in Illustrator under the artistic category. I tweaked one of those default brushes, and I wanted to make it a little bit thinner and more expressive. I'm going to use this preset. But I'm going to change the stroke color to white because we are going to draw over details here, and probably starting first with the trousers or jeans. So let's just see what happens if I start drawing with the brush tool. Now, the brush tool is great. For drawing single lines. But then each time you draw, is going to start a new line. And this way, if I Zoom a little bit even closer, you will see this better. This way, each time you are drawing, you are pretty much just replicating the same line. However, instead of drawing individual lines like this, if you want to continue an existing line instead of starting a new path, what you can also do is to change the preferences for the brush tool by double clicking on it, you will get this option to edit selected parts and also keep selected. If you turn both of these options on, you will be able to start drawing a line and continue drawing it. And you can see how the line is getting stretched further out. Now, I can still start a new line as long as I'm far enough from the original one. So if I draw here, it's going to be another line. If I draw here, again, it's going to be a new one, and your cursor is actually helping you to see what you are going to do. So if it shows a little star next to the brush, that means it's going to start a new line. When the star disappears, that means it's going to continue drawing one of your existing lines. Now if you want to jump back to a previous line, just hold down commando control and click on it to select it, and then use the Brush tool again. You can continue either left or the right side of it. For this illustration, I am going to try to keep these lines fairly long. And as you can see, I'm just drawing over the parts that I'm not happy with. And probably that's roughly around a good length that I wouldn't want to exceed. And to make sure that I'm not going to extend or continue drawing this line, I just have to click somewhere outside. So essentially deselected. Now, let me show you what happens. If I start a new line now, you can see it's overlapping the previous one. I can start drawing it from here, and then just keep drawing again, this one is going to continue, and I can even refine sections of it. So I can just go down again. Keep drawing, keep drawing over it, if I'm not happy with this placement. And then if I want to end this line, maybe here, I just command click outside to deselect it, and then I can start a new line. So let's go down again a little bit closer. And keep drawing. Now, don't forget that you can use the rotate view tool adjust the angle of the view. This is something you can find here in the toolbar. So that's the rotate view tool. And with that, it makes it much easier to continue drawing in a specific angle, especially when you're using stylus. So I am going to draw this all the way out there. If I want to adjust existing lines, I can just select it. And again, using the brush tool, I can refine it. Like so. If you want to revert back to the original orientation, just press escape on the keyboard, and then we can zoom out a bit to see how this looks. Now, if I wanted to, I could select any of these and use either the smooth or the simplify options to refine it a bit more. But I feel like most of it looks good, maybe on this one as well, I would use a little bit of more smooth. And if I don't want this overlap to be visible here, I could just use the direct selection tool and drag that point up a little bit. You don't always have to be di precise with your brushstrokes. What you mainly are looking to do is to avoid repetitions, so make it look organic and unique each time. One other tape that I always recommend to do is for your lines, it's actually good to have a separate layer set up. So as you can see right now, they are in the same layer as all the other shapes, but I'm going to select them and create a new layer. I will call this one lines and shading and drag these objects in here. So now we can see that we have these three parts at it there, and we could even lock our illustration layer for now. So we won't accidentally move anything around in the background. One other advantage of doing this is that I can very quickly select all of them. And if I wanted to make them a bit thicker, I could just increase the point size. And again, it was much faster to do it this way. So now, if I use the brush tool, I can zoom back, and let's just continue drawing these lines. Again, I'm just trying to draw this with one single line, so I will go one single line like that. If I want to set this to two points, I can do that very quickly. I think two points works quite well in this illustration. When I zoom out, that's the good amount of thickness. But not every line has to be the same thickness. Like this one, I feel like even with one point is strong enough. Yeah Zoom a bit closer. And now let's draw this line right here. W to start from there and go down. Let's try it again. Maybe I start from here. Let's draw it again. Yeah. That looks good, and then I'm going to just increase this to two points. Now, to get this curve right, I'm actually going to select this path, simplify it a bit, Ma it smoother, also simplify it, and then let's just select the anchor point and drag this handle down like that. Maybe the anchor point can come back a bit right there. All right. Now let's move on. We need to also draw a few more lines here. So we have one more going this way. We can continue this all the way there. Then we will need another line running down here. Another line there. Then we just need a few more lines up here, one running down there, another one here. And one more for the pocket, which is right there. Now I don't want this to overlap, so I'm just going to drag it up a little bit. So let's take a look from a distance. This is looking quite good. I'm just going to add a button here with the ip tool. Holding down the shift key, I make it a perfect circle and then press shift x to switch the colors around. So we set it up like that. Now let's take a look without the sketch on top of it, and it looks good. I'm just going to bring back the sketch so I can see my additional line. 8. Adding lines on the upper body and hair: I'm going to use the same brush for the T shirt, the sleeve. I'm going to just draw over this part here, and then another line running down on the other side. And these two lines I can make also thicker, like that. Again, let's see without the sketch. Can I adjust this one a bit. Follow that shape better. It's looking good. Again, let's take a look at the sketch. Okay. So I'm going to use the brush tool, come back here. We need one more line there and another line here. That looks quite good. Now let me just draw a little detail for the elbow. We can have just a little detail there. And then we can use the same brush over the trainers as well. So let's just use the brush. And I'm actually going to draw a few lines here. Maybe go this way. So this works quite nicely for the stitching details as well. Maybe we can have another line running down there. Again, one more line here. Another line running down there. And I feel like that's already good. Maybe we can also have one more line running across. Let's see. And here. Maybe a bit further down like that. All right. And now it's time to add the details on the hair, again, which I had in my original sketch. So I'm going to zoom closer in this part here, and I'm going to use the same settings, and I'll start adding some brush strokes. So let's start with this one here. We'll turn it around a bit. So there we go first line. We add another one here. Then let's do another one right here. We can then do another one here. And one thing that I normally do is I also like to vary the brushes a bit, so I'm not drawing them in the same direction. I start drawing another one from left to right instead of right to left, again, I'm going to flip my camera back or view. So I can draw it in different direction once more. I'm going to draw and extend this line a bit more here, coming down. And then let's just keep drawing some more lines up here. One line And then another one. One more in here. We can also have some lines outside of the hair running like there. Maybe some running this, could also have one more here. Could also have one more here just to break up a little bit the shape. So let's take a look at this without our sketch. And I feel like that looks quite nice. Maybe we can also have some smaller lines here, and maybe one more up here. Like that. And I'm going to also use the same brush to add some reflection details on the glasses. So I'm actually going to draw around it first here. Another line there, maybe just on the top. And then just draw a zig zag like this and maybe reduce the stroke size on this. It thinner. Now the zigzag. And let's take a look at this from a distance. I feel like that edit some nice little detail there. And I actually want to also have some additional lines drawn with the same color as the hair. So just to make it look like there's some additional hair detail. And now, there is a useful setting. If you don't want to see your anchor points when you're drawing these very thin lines, you can actually go in the view menu and you can choose the hide edges option. So when you do that, you can draw without seeing the anchor points. So let me just undo this step. Draw another hair detail. So as you can see, now I can draw without having any anchor points showing up. I will use the thicker line for this. So there is one had line. Maybe we can have a few headlines coming down here as well around the ear. So there's one, come on, click outside to deselect. There's another one. We can maybe have a few more coming down here as well. One and two. And let's do the same thing here, one and two. And I will maybe add a few more up here as well. So I am just using this very sparingly. I'm not trying to do too much detail with it. But it's a good way to make it a bit more dynamic, more interesting, have a bit more fun with some of these details. So taking a look at this from a distance, I feel like it's coming nicely together. Maybe there's one last detail that I need here at the bottom. I wanted to have a line here running across at the bottom. But for this, I'm actually going to use the line tool because I want this to be completely straight, and I even hold down the shift key to keep it horizontal. And once the line is there, I will just choose the same brush, this custom brush that we've been using for our lines. This time, I'm going to increase the thickness up to three points and also change it from uniform to this option right here. So this is going to add the taper and keep it thicker on one end and thinner on the other side. So that works quite well. I will probably set this to this darker color, align it here, something like that. That looks good. Let's go back a bit. That's just a very subtle little detail there, but I think that works. So seeing without the lines, and with the lines, this is what we achieved. As you can see, it adds quite a lot of interest and makes the illustration more fun. And now it's time to add some shading. 9. Adding shading with texture brushes: Similarly to the lines together, shading can really help to bring everything together and add a lot of additional interest in the illustration. So this is actually something that you can either do on a separate layer or you can do it directly in the illustration layer. I like to keep it on a separate layer mainly because I like to see before and after to judge whether I improve the illustration or not. So what I'm going to do here is to unlock my illustration layer because I will be working with that. And just to keep things even tighter, instead of having the lines and the shading in the same layer, I will just keep the lines on their own. So that's the one that we've done before, and I will actually create one additional layer, and I'll call that one shading. So the reason that we need the illustration layer is because we will be working with the shapes that we established there. The lines layer can be locked, so I'm going to keep that one locked. And I'm going to start with the hair. So there I would like to have some shading here just to define the form of the shape for this, we will be using this darker blue color that we already have in our swatches. And the way I'm going to do this is that I'm going to copy this shape from the illustration layer. Then I select the shading layer, and I'm going to paste it there with commando Control F. Commando Control C to copy and then commando Control F to paste. And because we have the lines underneath the shading at the moment, we can see how this duplicate object was added, but we will actually want to keep the shading layer underneath the lines. So that's where it should go. But also, this object actually doesn't need any field colors. So I'm going to select the field color and set it to none. So now, even though that we have this shape here, it doesn't actually show anything. But what we are going to do is to draw inside this. So we only use this shape as a mask. I'm going to click on the draw inside option when you can press shift D twice. And then here I will be using these textured brushes that I also brought in from the brushes document. So if you don't have them yet, make sure you bring them in. And mainly I will be using this one right here. So I'll select that. I select the darker blue color. But you have to make sure that the color is actually assigned to the stroke color because this is what we will be using with the brush tool. And then once that's selected, with the brush tool, if I start drawing, you can already start seeing these details appear here. Go to zoom back a bit, and let's just draw a bit more of this detail here. And what I'm trying to create at the moment is just to have a flow for the texture that I'm using. So I'm following the shape of the hair, as you can see. And for this, actually, I'm going to turn off the keep selected and edit selected parts options because I want to keep building up this effect. So I keep drawing over it a couple of times until I'm happy with the way it looks, and I can fill in a bit more detail up here on the top. Like that. And since the draw inside mode turned our original hair shape into a clipping mask, we will be able to make changes to this so we can refine where we want this shadow to show up. I'm going to press shift to escape from the draw inside mode, and then open up this clip group, select the mask itself, which will show up here. And then using the direct selection tool, we can adjust these anchor points and move them down to align to the detail where we want this shading to appear. Now, I'm not going to be extremely precise with this. But as you can see, very quickly, it can be adjusted. And go all the way down there. And then this point as well can come down here. And already we have a good result and maybe just this part here, as well can come down a bit and curve it down that way. So let's click outside. Zoom out a bit, and it looks much more interesting. We can of course align this path a bit better if we wanted to, so we can just move this point further to the left and that handle can be adjusted as well. So I like sometimes to create the texture first and then refine the mask. That's exactly what I'm doing here. So again, we can select this point and just move it to the left a bit like so, and that looks quite nice right there. Now, it's up to you how you want to refine this, but I'm actually going to go even further following this shape. So I feel like this should go all the way down there, and this one also needs to come this way. Just to completely follow along that other shape that we created. So you can keep tweaking this until you're happy with the result. I can select multiple anchor points as well by shift clicking on them and using the ero keys on the keyboard, adjust them around. Yeah, I think that is looking even better now. Now, I want to do the same thing here for the neck detail. So this shape I'm again going to copy and paste into the shading layer. Just make sure that you select the shading layer with the little circle next to it, and then press commando Control F when pasting the shape in. Don't forget to remove the field color of that shape. And in this case, I actually will also need this other shape, so I will copy that and also bring it here in the shading layer, paste it in. And I will even move these points out a bit, so I'm just going to extend it a little bit like that. I select these two shapes, and using the shape builder tool, which is Shift M from the keyboard shortcut. I actually only want to use that bottom detail there. So I will hold down the old key and remove every section that I don't need. So now we are left with that. I'm just going to show with a different color. So that's the shape that we are left with. I'm going to remove the color from it, so set the field to none, then use the draw inside mode. And then with the brush tool, I'm actually going to use this darker red color and the same brush that we had before, and I'm just going to draw a line. And that's a little bit too thick or too big. So after drawing the line, we can actually resize it. Let's just open the path, select it and reduce the stroke size down to maybe 0.25. There's a nice texture now. So let's just move this around a bit. I will use the arrow keys on the keyboard, move it in a place where it looks good, something like that. Now, for the color of this, we actually want to use the skin tone and make that a bit darker. So I will shift click here and make this darker, and maybe increase the saturation as well. So that looks like a good option. And I'm just going to duplicate this path and drag it along a bit just to add a bit more depth. And then I'll duplicate Again, I want to increase the density here at the bottom, like so, and then one more time, maybe fill up a little bit more detail here on the top as well. Like that. All right. So let's see now if we zoom back and turn off the draw inside mode. My main problem is that it got a little bit too dark, so it looks almost the same as the other color. There's not enough contrast between the T shirt and the shading. So it should either be darker or a bit brighter. And in this case, I feel like a bit brighter will help. So I will increase the brightness of the color up. Let's see if we click away, this looks much better. So let's see also from a distance. Yeah, I like how this looks. 10. More shading and final touches: I would like to have some of this detail coming up here as well, under the chin, and maybe also have some on the arm and on the vast. For sure, we will need this. So let's start with the vast. I'm going to copy that shape and also the T shirt shape. So both of these together, put them on the shading layer. And then using the shape builder tool, I'm going to hold down the old key and remove the details that I don't need. So we end up with this little triangle here. Again, we can remove the field color from this and then choose draw inside. Then use the brush tool, and to make sure that we use the same color that we established here. I'm just going to save that into the switches panel. There it is. I'll put it next to the other color just so we can see these were the two that we use for the skin tones. And then coming back to this shape here, if I use the brush tool, I can start adding the details. Going to zoom out a bit. And this time, I'm actually going to use this thicker brush. So we were just going to draw down like that. And I feel like that's already looking quite good. Maybe it can be from this angle, or let's try it from the other angle like that. Yeah, I feel like something subtle will work, y, something like that. So I don't want it to blend into the T shirt too much, but we can see without the shading and with the shading. So we already have quite a good amount of detail added once again before and after. But let's just keep going. I'm going to do the same thing here with the arm. Now, you might recall that the arm was actually already turned into a clipping mask when we were adding the bracelet. So for this to work, we will have to find this first. And sometimes when you work with clipping masks, the easiest way to select an object is to actually use the direct selection tool, click on the edge. And then you can use this little magnifying glass icon here in the layers panel to jump down to the object. So there's our clipping path. So we are going to use this, and I just clicked on the circle to make sure the whole path is selected, and then shift click on this other shape as well, which we will need. Copy these two, and then come back up to our shading layer, select that, and commando Control F to paste these two parts in. And just so we can see these together, I'm going to change their field color as well. So there's the two shapes. And then I'm going to use the shape builder tool Shift M, a keyboard shortcut to quickly access it. And the holding down door option, we can remove these bits here because we only need the arm. So now that's selected, we can set the color to none to remove the field color. And now using the draw inside option. We can paint over this again with the brush tool. Just zoom out a bit. Let's try to draw with the brush. I'm going to use this other brush. And I feel like it's too thick, I'm going to reduce the thickness. Let's try again. That looks better, and we just need to use the same color for this. So let's just select that shape that we created, and we want the stroke color to be set to this darker shade of skin tone. Okay. Let's just draw one more line here. Maybe one more running down there. And yeah, that looks quite nice. So let's click away and press shift D to get out of this draw inside mode. So once again, before shading, after shading. And while I'm doing this, I just remember that these two fingers can also be set to the darker color. And of course, they should be behind the other shapes. So let's just move them all the way back. Like that. Now it's time to add the shading under the chin, so for the neck area right here. For this, we will actually need a couple of shapes. First of all, remember, we have the ear on a separate layer. We have the head, the neck, and the hair. So we select all of these shapes by holding down the shift key and then copy them all onto the shading layer. So that we have everything placed in, and I'm just going to add the different color on them just so we can see them better. Then using the shape builder tool, we can start subtracting everything that we don't need, and that's holding down the old key and painting over all of these details. So now we got the shape that we wanted to work with, and we can just remove the field color from it. Having this shape selected, I can go into the draw inside mode. And then to save time, I'm going to use the layer spanel and select one of the previously used brush strokes, then switch to the brush tool and just start painting from the right side. So this way, I will use exactly the same settings that we had here. Very quick and easy way to go back to a setting that you prefer to work with. And you can see what I'm doing here is trying to build up the shading from the chin and the head because these are the two objects that cast the shadow. So I want it to be more intense around here. That's like the strongest section of the shading. And maybe just one more there around the neck. Okay, so let's see this from a distance. Again, we can see without the shading and with the shading. It looks quite nice and it defines the shape of the head much better. But now I also feel like I want to adjust the shape of the nose and the mouth bits. I'm going to lock the shading layer, and I unlock the lines layer. So I actually want the nose to be slightly in front of the glasses. Like that. And also the mouth, I think can come a little bit this way, can make it a slightly bit smaller. And let's just do it back. Yeah, I feel like that's a bit of an improvement there, very subtle, but it feels more natural. And also, I feel like the chin can be refined a bit. I'm just going to use the direct selection tool and drag this out a bit. I want a little bit more of an angle here compared to how it was before, so it was there before it looked too round. Now, I feel like the structure of the head reads better this way, and maybe even this point can come inside a bit. So if I drag that down a little bit, it will read a bit better. Yeah. I feel like that looks a bit better. Just subtle little improvements. I keep noticing these things as I go along. And like I said before, don't be afraid of adjusting your sketch at any point. And now I'm just going to continue doing the same thing, adding a few more shading details. So I will need here on the hand, and some around the ankles. So let's do this quickly. I'm going to select this shape right here. We will also need this shape. Let's just use that shape as well at the same time. Let's copy all of this onto the shading layer. I will just make sure it's unlocked, paste them in, and then let's just set them to a different color that we'll stand out. Use the shape builder tool and delete the bits that we don't need. Now, remove the fill color, select a previously used shape from the layer panel. And then selecting these two shapes from the layer panel, with shift clicking on the circle. We will need to combine these into a compound path. That's object menu compound path make or commando Control eight, is the shortcut. So this creates a single shape from them. This is just to allow using the draw inside mode while both of these objects are selected. Since they are not connected to each other, we had to use the compound path option. Now I can choose draw inside. And then I'm just going to quickly select one of the previously used shading details. So my brush tool is loaded with the setting. And then I'm just going to draw here from top down, just filling this in. I don't want to go over the trainers, so I'm careful not to do that. I will draw to the side a bit, like this, maybe switch to the other brush as well to fill in a bit more thicker detail here like that. And then the same thing here. That looks actually really good already. So I will turn off the shading. And now we just need to do the arm. So some shading here at the bottom. And since this is already in the shading layer, we set this up before when we created the shading up here. We just have to select the clipping path that was generated and then go back into the draw inside mode. Now select one of the shading details from up there. Use the brush tool, and then let's paint over here at the bottom. On line, another one. And then one more maybe with this other brush. Like that. Okay. So that was just a very subtle little detail there. We can zoom out and see how this looks. I'm quite happy with how the shading details stand out, so we can take a look again without the shading and with it. It at it depth, but in a very subtle way. So I don't like to overdo shading because it can distract from the illustration itself. Again, let's see without the lines and the shading and put them back together. So it really helps to make the illustration pop. And this should be visible even from a distance. I also like to do this, just zoom out and remove and add those details back again. And that's why it's worth spending some time setting up the shading on a separate layer and also the lines, so you can really judge it at a later point whether they improve the illustration or not. Of course, it's always easier to work in a single layer. It's faster, but it won't allow you the flexibility to go back and make changes. Like, for instance, here, if I wanted to, I could still select all the lines together, and I could set them up much thicker than before. And yeah, that's just something you won't be able to do as easily if you had everything on the same layer to begin with. 11. 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.