Learn Making Vector Arts in Adobe Illustrator CC

1. Introduction: Hello everyone and welcome to the learning session Learned meeting vector arts in Adobe Illustrator CC. In this session, you will be learning about the interface of Adobe Illustrator workspace of Illustrator creating of the noon documents, some tools how to important place images, steps to create vector art. What is the difference in tablet and mouse use when creating a vector? How to outline using brush, using pencil for hairs, using mask for base color collection data sheets for shading, how to use gradient for background, and then exporting of your art work. This is going to be the reference image I got mine from Unsplash. You can get the Lincoln Project description. This is the vector that we will have by the end of this learning session. So without any further ado, let's get started. 2. Illustrator Workspace and Picture Importing: As we all know, in this class, we will be learning how to make vector arts as a beginner. So first of all, we need to know on which software we're going to do that. And obviously we will be doing that inside Adobe Illustrator CC. And this is the interface you are going to get when you launch Adobe Illustrator CC for the first time. Now, obviously your recent part will be cleared, but I have some files here because these are the files are these are the projects I have previously worked on. So if you do not see anything in your recent part, there's no need to panic because you just have not made any single project inside Illustrator and you are doing it for the first time. When it comes to creating a new file inside Adobe Illustrator, you can either click on Create New button or go to File and then click on New. When you click on news, you will get a Windows Popup in which you can select the dimensions of the document or the Canvas on which you are going to work. So for instance, this time we are going for art and illustration. So we can go to those templates and select any template which we like. For example, we have the A4 paper size, we have before paper size and other. Similarly, if we go to Film and Video templates here you can have HD for k, k to k, etcetera, etcetera. And the same goes for web, mobile, print, and etc. So what we will be doing is we will be making a custom preset. And for our custom preset, I will be suggesting you to go forward pixels. Then 1080 by 1080. And this is because 1080 by ten, it is like the standard for most of the social media post. These actually fill up your mobile screen in the portrait mode and that is good. Actually it doesn't fill the whole screen. It actually like if this is your imaginary mobile screen, it fills about 80 per cent and then 20% is left for the caption. So this provides a very good impact. You can choose the color mode. It can either be RGB or CMYK. And I will be suggesting you to go for 72 ppi raster effects. And that is because if you will go with the higher PPI, that will be importing more load or that will be more CPU-intensive for your computer. So if you have a computer with like the RTX 30 TTI and stuff. So you can go with the height. But if you have like a normal PC or a mid-range PCI will be suggesting you should go for 72 PPI. And then you have all of this. You can name your document. So I will be naming it vector. And then just click on Create button. And when you click on Create button, it will take some time and your document will load. And now this is the basic interface in which you will be working inside Adobe Illustrator. So now I can make it full screen by pressing F on keyboard. And now we are full screen. And now you can see here is this like a white page with some borders and here are some panels. So first of all, let's talk about from the top left here you can see it's the Illustrator logo and then you have the home icon. If you click on Home icon, you will be redirected back to the home side from where we created this document. Then you can see some of the buttons here. We also call these tabs. And these tabs has different kind of function that you will need when you will be using Adobe Illustrator. Next thing you can see here is this button written as essential. The essential is actually for the workspace. The overall interface that you are seeing right now is the workspace of your Adobe Illustrator. And it is made by docking and undocking of different panels here. So you can see this is a panel, this is a panel, this is a panel. And even, these are some panels. You can even dog these here. So this is for the workspace. And if your workspace is not looking like mine, you can just click on this. Go for essentials, classic or even essentials. And still, if your interfaces not like mine, you can just click on Reset Essentials and everything will be shifted back to the default one, and you will have the same interface as mine. On the bottom, you can see this is the Zoom percentage. It will be modified. If you use zoom tool, you can either go with this and then you have this number written here. And this tells you about which art board are you on. This white page is actually your artboard. Similarly, like you have a Canvas in your physical painting, you can have multiple artboards if you are going for a storyline, for example, let's say you have 1234 art boards, so it will tell you on which artboards you are working. If we are on the first one, it will save one. If you are on the second one equals C2. If you are on third one equals c3. Next you have this bar which says selection. This bar actually tells you the name of the tools you are working with. For example, this is the toolbar and I have my selection tool, select it. The next tool is set direct selection tool. As you can see, if I left-click on it and select it, it will say direct selection. Similarly, if I go for the color picker or eyedropper, it will say, I drop it. I will go with width tool. It will say width tool. I will go with Zoom to liquids is Zoom. So this is just to tell you which tool you're working with. Then you have on the right side some panels which say Properties layer in libraries. The libraries is actually for the people who are going to work with Adobe Stock. So you have all of your creative data linked to your Adobe account here. Then you have the layers tab. It is essential to know about the layers tab or LED panel just because it is the thing you will be working with the most. For example, if I click on this button, I can create new layers. So now I have six layered hairs. For example, if I'm on layer one and create a stroke, so this is a stroke. Then I go to layer three and I create a solid and maybe color it with white. Then I go to Layer five and I create a random shape with a different color. So now I have some elements inside my layers. And these elements can be shifted from one layer to another just by dragging them. And the arrangement of these elements inside these layers actually tell you which component you will be seeing first. For example, layer six is on top but it is empty right now. So we'll go towards their five and layer five has this path. So we're seeing this on top. If we drag this path to layer six, you will see that pattern top. And this is about the basics of layers tab. Also, you can hide layers by pressing on this button. You can select the circle to select everything that is present inside that layer. You can delete the layer by just pressing this button. You can click on this layer to create a sub layer inside one layer. So these were some basics about the layers tab. And then you have the Properties tab, inmates, you have the information related to Document. And then if you select a particular tool, you will have information regarding that tool. For example, if I have selected brush tool, I have information regarding stroke because that is required, I can increase the stroke value. I can change its opacity. Or you can say visibility, I can change the brush style. I can recolor it. I can join two or more strokes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All of the stuff or all of the related function of that particular tool or of that particular element can be seen inside the property step. These words, some basics about the interface and some musste use panels of Adobe Illustrator when it comes to meeting vector art. Now we will be going towards the vector naught formation. Now for the vector art formation, you can either go for drawing or tracing. If you are going for drawing, I will suggest you that you have a better handle. You can see the better practice of drawing all of the lines and stuff. For that, you can go for a software that is called your ref. This is the spelling. So pure ref is a software that is used to dark images on top of your screen. If you open up pure ref, you will have a rectangle or a scared that you can modify it. So let's say you are working on illustrator in this position. So you will dock your image here and then you can just come here and see that image and draw a figure like here are the eyes, the nose, the lips. These are the distance this and you will draw a vector. So this is the first method that I will suggest to go for when you are an expert, or at least when you have created like 50 or a 100 vector arts just by tracing. So then you will be expert in lines and stuff and you will have the basic knowledge related to anatomy. The second method is by vector tracing. And in the vector tracing you will have an image on your art board and a bottom layer. And then you can lock that layer so that you don't mess up the image and you begin drawing on the upper layers, and in the end you just hide the tracing layer. So we will be going with this same method. And let's see, delete all of these layers. We're on layer one, and now we will be importing a document. For importing. You can go to File. And then here you can see the vet in place. When you click on it, you will get a windows pop up and then you can redirect to the place where you have your reference image and just click on that and select Open. Now I'm going to place that image here. When you open that, you will see that image like a square or rectangle near your cursor, right? I'll just left-click using my mouse. My image will be here. And as you can see, the dimensions of my art board for 1080 by 1080 and image is far bigger than that. And this is going to help me in making the vector art because my image quality will not be distorted. So when you have decrease the size of the image are optimized as the size of the image. By using these handles, you can place that anywhere on your art board just by using your left mouse button and moving that. But make sure you have selected the selection tool in doing that. So after placing the image at correct position, this is going to be a good position for us. You can just change the name by double-clicking obviously, and then typing reference or maybe simple raft will work fine. Then you can lock this layer and now nothing will work on this layer. And to draw anything to do anything else. Inside this day, you have to unlock this. You have to create a new layer. So we will be going with a new layer and then we will work on that later. So this was all about this lecture in which we learned about the basics of Adobe Illustrator. We learned about Workspace, we learned about different panels and some basics of most use panels. Also we got knowledge about two ways of making the vector arts. And then we'll learn about importing the reference image for creation of vector arts. This was all about this lecture. 3. Explanation of Picture and Tools: So in the previous lecture, we learned about the basics of Illustrator workspace, some panels, tools, and importing of the image. Now, let's move towards the vector art purely. So first of all, the question is that what we are seeing right now is an image. This image is captured by obviously a camera, and it is made up of different kinds of pixels. Everything is fully detailed. It's a human face. So how we are actually going to create this? Or let me rephrase that. How we are actually going to recreate this just by using some lines and colors. This question arises. We actually have to recreate this the most possible, realistic, or at least semi realistic way, how we are going to do that? So the basic answer to that question is, we will be first of all, making the outline. So for example, I have the brush tool here. First, what we will do is we will outline the face like this. And then we will be going for lower part. And here we have the eyes and the lips. So I'm just going to rough right now because I just want to let you know how we are going to achieve. So we will have the basic outlines first. The next thing that we will do is we will make another layer by new layer button. Then we will draw the head part and this is the hairs and this after the outlines. And here we will have a sketch of our person or the image. The next thing that we will do is we will create another layer. And then we will make a closed figure like extending from this part and all the way to the skin part that is visible, the ears, and again like this. Then in this closed part, we will be making this part a mask. And we will make that by clicking on this button and it will make a clipping mask here, as you can see, then what will happen is anything that you will create will be limited inside this part. It will never escape. For example, here you can see this is the scale we made. It is outside that mask but it is not visible. If you turn off that mask, you can see it. It is outside. But if you make that mask visible again, it is limited to that, but this will actually help us in shading the figure. We will do like this and move this layer below, obviously the outlines and the colors and this will look like this. After that, in the colored part, we will be adding a color that is at least closest to the natural color. Something like this maybe. Then we will add sublayers of the same color, a bit darker and a bit lighter. Let me clue you in like this. Here you can see this is the base color rehab. We made it a bit darker. And then we are on the different sublayers. And now we will be going forward like this. And some thing like this. We have the darks here. And then we will go towards the right, create another sub layer. By clicking the Save button. Here it is. And now we will be going with the light layers or you can say highlight. So the difference of these layers, or the difference of these light, dark and the base color will create a depth. See me as you can see in the original picture, like you can see. This is the base color and this is the part that is against the lighting. For example, here you can see this is the highlights part. This part is against the lighting because this is creating shadows. And we will actually be using this depth of colors to recreate this image in the most possible, realistic or semi realistic way. So I tried my best to clue you in how we are going to achieve this. Given also, be able to do the same stuff by the end of this session because you will be having the lectures on all of this. Like the, all of the outlines here, shading, coloring, etc. You will have separate lectures and all of this. So this was enough about the explanation of the picture. And wanting more hair is what type of picture you should. Opt for when creating a vector art. So I will be suggesting you to take a friend feast picture because that has the most possible. As you know, the elements of the face like, you know, you see, here we have ears, we have lips, we have nodes, we have eyes. Side post pictures. You will only have one eye and nose and half of the lips, etc. And that actually sometimes can create some mess, especially for the big news. So as a big need, at least, I will suggest you to go for front feast focused portraits. And that will actually help you a lot in developing the techniques of making the good vector arts. Let's just delete all of these layers right now. Now the other thing that we're going to talk about is dividing the viewers into two categories. So for that, let's just create a new layer. And here we have the brush tool. And now you can either be a mouse user, You can be a tablet user. Both people can make vector art sexually. Even if you have a mouse, you have like two buttons, right and left leg, you can move the mouse right, left, up, down depending upon your accuracy. For example, let me draw something. I'm making this by using mouse. And obviously I'm not a good artist when it comes to creating using mouse. When it comes to the tablet, you can actually be pretty accurate with that just because you have a pencil and you have a tablet and you will just drive the thing and that will help you. So if you are a mouse user, you will only be using one tool and that is pegged to here you can see the pen tool. You will have the pen tool, you will use leftmost button. It will add a node. A will move forward at another left mouse click and it will add a node. This would become a line. You will add another left mouse button and you can drag to make a curve. If you have a curve, you can click on this anchor point to make the line again straight and again add a curve. And this is how you actually use the pen tool. Is it just the basics? And here you have the stroke color, you have the inside colors. You can always change that stuff. When it comes to the tablet users, I will be suggesting you to tools that we will be using throughout the procedure of making a vector arts, we will be using brush tool, as you can see here. It only uses the outline color. And then we will be using pencil tool. Here you can see This is the pencil tool. And it is it can use both. It can use the insightful and it can use the outlines. For the brush tool. You will actually be using Brush tool for all of the outlining work. And you will be using pencil tool to make this hares. Also to do all of the shading stuff and all of the things that we will be doing inside this learning session using brush and pencil can be achieved in the same way using your mouse by using the Pen tool. I explained this in the beginning of the learning session just because so you know that when you are going to do the vector add stuff with mouse, which tool you have to use. And vengeful going with a tablet, which tools you have to use. So right now you can see you have a flowchart in front of you. If you are a mouse user, I will be suggesting you to go for pen tool if you are a tablet users will be using Brush tool and pencil tool. Also, I will be recurrently telling you these things inside upcoming lecture. So this was all about the difference of tools that we will be using as different users. And all of the steps that we will be using to progress inside the session to make a semi realistic or realistic vector art. This was all about this lecture. Meet you in the next lecture soon. 4. Outlining of Face: Now we have the basic knowledge for starting with the vector art. So let's start making the vector art. Officially. The first thing that we wanted was our reference image. We have that on layer. We have rename that layer and we have also lock that layer so we cannot mess that up. The next thing is creating a new layer. And as we discussed in the previous lecture, we will be beginning with the outlining. So I will just double-click this layer and rename it to outlining or maybe outlines. So first of all, again, let's divide the category. Or you can say, let's categorize. If you are a mouse user, just click P on your keyboard or go ahead. You spend two and start outlining. If you are a tablet user, click on B from your keyboard or you can go here and you have the brush tool. Now, first of all, before going for the brush tool, double-click it. When you double-click it, you have this fidelity. You can either make the lines smoother or accurate. Now, this will depend upon how efficient you are using your tablet. If you are efficient enough that you can actually draw all of the circles, all of the roundness and everything you can bring that on. You can go with almost this fidelity. And if you are not good enough, I will be suggesting this to stick with the default. The next thing you have to do is go to Properties. And here you can see the brush. Expand this and you have different options. Five-point round brush works very good. When you are going for the outlines, you just need to double-click this and have this brush options here. And then in the sidebar, you have to click on figs and then pressure and increase the variation to the max. And when you click Okay, you will have your brush related to the pressure sensitivity of your tablet, for example, you can see this is like the minimum to the maximum and minimum. Again, this is what we all actually want when we are going for graphics tablet. And for the pen users, don't vary. I've also got your back. You will draw all of these lines and you have these lines, then you can increase the stroke like this. And if you click on Stroke, here you can see the profile. And from the profile you can change the uniform to this. And it will also modify like this, some hardness and softness and hardness and some softness. So don't worry if you don't have a graphics tablet, you can also achieve the stuff. So let's officially begin the outlining. I will be beginning with the nose B. Obviously. I can reduce the size by using the brackets button that are present on keyboard after the IOP. And here you have to select the outline color. We will be going with the black. And let's just draw the outlines for the nose. And here we are. Like this. You can press Control Z on your keyboard to undo your last action. And that actually helps a lot because when you are drawing, most of the stuff happens that you don't want to happen. And this is it. We have the nose. Let's go for the lips now. Z on your keyboard will help you zooming in and out when you press Z end, but you hold all that zooms out. So Control Z again for the board or do. And this desert this. Okay, So we have joined the boot edges in a good way. And here it is. We have got the lips. Now. Here we have only one ear, so we will be doing that actually, as you can see, I'm going a bit rough on the edges when it comes to lips and ears. And that is because this will be covered inside the hair parts, so you don't need to worry about that. But obviously you have to be precise and accurate when it comes to the part which will be exposed throughout these parts, but these edges will be covered inside the hair parser. Don't need to worry about that. Then we can go with the facial feature like this part and it is pretty accurate. Now the eyes. And we will be making just the outline for the I and the remaining part will be done in the respective lecture. Let's go like this. So we have almost the same techniques and some light lines or light strokes you can see for the borders. We have it again. And here it is. You will obviously be taking more time if you are new to the outlining and the vector art style. But if you are already working on this stuff for like some year or two, you have made some vector arts back in the time. Or even you just have used the pencil for a long time, you will be accurate with your strokes and stuff. I'm just ending it up here because we want the canvas to be filled. And you will actually have to do this stuff again and again when you will be making vectors because not every picture has all of the extremely T's and stuff that you want. Now you can hide the reference latency. We have a pretty good outline here for the r vector. This is looking good to me. See. So I think we have made of the extremity. Let's just add some detailing to the ear. Like this. And this. This is going to work fine. We have the eyes, we have the nose. And this is pretty much everything. We have got the basic outline. Like. Let's just also add something here. We can make this a bit lighter and yes, this is what we have made so far. You can always save this by pressing Control lesson keyboard or go into File and then Save. I've already saved that. That is why it is showing me the button. So this is the basic outlines are the basic skeleton you can see for our vector art. Let's just lock this layer. And in the next lecture we will be working on another layer. 5. Using Pencil for Hairs: By far, this is what we have created. We have actually added outlines to our reference image, and now we have done the first step in making the vector art. Now let's proceed towards adding here. So inherent part, we will be adding eyebrows, we will be adding beard and mustache. We will be adding the head here. And this will be actually helping us turning this outline into a proper like grayscale image or a basic sketch. So far that first of all, create a new layer and you can rename that to here. And we actually rename these layers so that it makes easy to move these layers up and down in the end so you do not create any type of mess. So again, when it comes to here, you have two options. You can either go for pen tool if you are a mouse user, you can go for pencil tool. If you are a tablet, use it. For the tablet users. I will be suggesting you to choose pencil tool and go slowly and add some sharp edges. At some, you know, the flame like effect. And these are the things that will be helping you in achieving the greatest things. Related to vector are the most realistic things, the most semi realistic thing, etc. Whatever you like. You have this, you can just click on this button to change the stroke color into the fill color. And obviously we wanted black and we are good to go. So we have one eyebrow. Let's go for the second one. And it is now actually when you create vector art, sometimes you have to change your reference image according to your choice. For example, you can see the eyebrows of the reference image are just like the simple strokes from the genome, the brush. But we're actually making these dark just because that will be adding a better look. So at it is we have eyebrows and then we will be adding a mustache. And similarly, you see here are some black and white hairs mixed up properly for the moustache, but we will be going with only black right now. So the person will be looking more younger than he actually is right now in this period of time. So these are the something, these are some adaptations you will have to learn when making vector art. You can obviously go for the exact thing in the reference image, and that is what actually, OK, means. You have to do the modifications according to your choice, according to your taste, according to the requirements from your client. If you are doing this for like freelancing work and stuff. So these are the things that you actually have to keep in mind that you actually have to practice these. Like I myself when I created the first vector, that was a really, really flat and that was like the exact replica of the image due to which some part of the eyes and eyeballs was not in the proper place. The hair part was not good and it's sector, sector. You actually learn from your mistakes every time, like you have to modify all of the things you do not get anything like pretty accurate to the reference. Sometimes you can actually also get everything pretty accurate as a reference. Like everything is like to the point like how you want it to be. The actor's face is actually in position. The header, like you want these to be like you want them blonde, they are blonde, you want them black, the black. You want everything to be pretty accurate and everything will be that sometimes this will also happen. But most of the time you will not be getting what you want. So you actually have to meet that by herself. And we have the mustache. Now, we can go for the beard. And here it is like the same methods you just have to draw on the reference. You can modify that a bird and it is small part of the beard. And then from here it is. And see, like I previously told you, these lines are these outlines will not create a mess because these are going to be hidden in front of hairs and this is actually happening right now here. This is also a good step before creating vector art to properly evaluate your image and see like where you want to be pretty accurate and you just want to have like a group look. Now as you can see, we have created a massive regard this here. So we can change that, but we can fix that by going with the tool. And here is our knife tool. You can move it with a knife tool selected. We can cut this part. And when we cut this part, this part gets separated properly. That x selection tool. Now this part is Cartier. So now we can go with the eraser tool and remove this circle here. I actually use scissors for us just to make sure that we don't mess up the remaining part here. When you have done that, you can go back to your layers. It is. Again, keep drawing. And you will be good to go. And all of this stuff is actually just the muscle memory that you will also achieve when you will create like a 100 vector arts or 200 vector arts within two or three months of Vmax. So there is nothing like you can do. There is nothing like a big thing that only a person like person who is teaching can do and you can do now, there's nothing like that. You can also do all of the stuff that I'm doing here. And everything is just the muscle memories. This is the muscle memory that I got my cell by creating this vector arts for years. Now. We have the beard here. And now you can see the vector is actually looking pretty good. Let's go for the upper here and see I messed up here a little bit. See, I can compensate that by adding another layer of here like this and none of it will be fine. And this is the thing I was talking about. You actually have to modify everything according to your liking, how you want it to be. This is the main theme or how your client wants it to be. Are you can see how it looks pretty impressive. So everything depends on you and luminance and nothing else. And again, you can see we've got this. We go from here. Drive it easy. And boom, we are good. And see here it is actually a bit. Let's develop, but we are going to make it properly developed because we want a vector out to be way. It is the basic here for the vector. Now you can see if you see the reference image now, it's actually looking like that. See, now we have actually got the sketch and this is like the first or the second step in making the vector art. You can also add some shades too. The head. For that you can add another layer, hide the log, the hair layer and call it hair shade. And for the shields, you can actually go like long lines like this. And then you can go for a gradient. Then you have a gradient. You can select black and white. Can change its direction to something like this, like top to bottom. So nine teach should be minus 9090 is good. Actually, we have dark on top. And we will move this color. Modify this to something like something darker. This it's almost like the same color, almost the same. Then you can modify its opacity a bit to make it properly blend. So it almost looks like the same thing. And then you can just draw again the long lines which are going to add some depth inside the beard. You again selected the same gradient. We can again go for 90 degree. And all of the paint tool users can also do this and that isn't also not going to cost more work. So everyone can do this. Everyone is more than welcome to do so. I will also suggest you to do this. Since we are adding some depth. You can keep on adding this. Here. You can see we went from here to here, and now we will be going from this part to maybe a bit less deep. And when we will add now and change the dimensions, it will go towards. This is overall adding some pretty nice depth, I would say. And here it is. And that's again the gradient, the 90 degree. See, we have this. Now for the moustache. We can go with another type of shading that we will also be learning in the shading part of the face colors. You have this. Let's add a color a bit lighter than black. Here it is, so dark gray. And then add other layers, like extending throughout it. The same dark black. This will also create some nice depth. Here is you can always modify these colors later if you don't like them, if you don't want them to be this way. And even I will also suggest you to try different things actually, because these are the things that you will learn or you will get the final result after practicing and after trying some maybe two or three types C. Now we have some depth over here. Even here. Let's do this. 90 degree modified capacity this time. And here it is. We have a beard completed. And upper here we will find the same way. This is pretty much it. Now we have outlines and now we have here. And we also learned about the gradient and gradient filling when we will, when we were discussing the hairs and shading of the hair x-bar, this was all about this lecture. We will be moving towards the next step in the upcoming lecture. 6. Masks for Base Color: In previous lectures, as you can see, this is what we have created. We have gone for outlines here and the shading of the hair to give it more realistic look. Now, the next step is going to be the coloring. And for the coloring, as we have already discussed, first of all, we're going to add a base color. And then we will go for the shading of that base colors, different color variance. So first of all, for the base colors, you have to decide which areas you have to fill. So here you can see only this part and this part of the human skin is visible. Obviously, if you will change the image, there will be different parts. May be if the person or the subject in the image is very long neck, the neck might not be visible, Or the second year might be visible. So there are different kinds of variance when it comes to the pictures. So the basic thing is you will have to create a new layer and name it color. And then you have to create a figure extending from here. And the whole of this part, just like this. And then you have to turn that object or subject into a clipping mask using this button. And for that you can always go for a pen tool as this would be easy to grow. Or you can either go for pencil tool. But in the case of pencil lecture, do you have to go like this? For example, I'm drawing using a pencil right now. And also make sure to stay below the outlines when drawing the colors. So here you can see, I do this. Now what I have to do is move towards the end where I left off last stroke. And here you can see the icon below the pencil changes. Like here you can see changes from start to a dash. So when it becomes a dash, you can press it on the graphics tablet and start extending it, and it will become the part of same stroke. If you were using a pen tool, you can always go for the same thing. And for that, you will see the icon of a hat. And here again, I can go like this. May be extended to this part first, Zoom n, or maybe just use pen tool and extended from this part. Actually when it comes to the curves, the pen tool is actually quite handy. And here it is. You just have to stay below the outlines. And that is the rule when you are going for making a mask for the base color. Now here you can see we are going with the neck part. This is, how's it going right now? So both tablet and mouse users can do this using the pen tool. Or the tablet users can also go with the pencil tool as I showed you earlier. Here it is now the last part, which is ear. And we're almost done here. Just a second. And it is the final curve. So as you can see, we have covered almost all of the parts and you can now extend it below the hair is like an easily. So here it is. We have this figure right now. Now let's test this figure first. I can change the color to maybe blue is actually change the outline. So Herodotus, so this is the figure that we just created. And if we just click on this button which says make or release clipping mask with the layer selected. It will convert the image yet element into a clipping mask. And now every new element that we will add, for example, I have a rectangle here or maybe a square here. I change its color. Now, I can see this clear right now, but it is not showing its color. That is because it is outside of this mask area. If I move it inside the mask, you can see the color. See, this is how the mask works. Now the next thing is how to move this mask below all of this stuff. That is just simple. Hold your left mouse button and drag this layer below. That is why told you earlier that you have to know about the moving of layers up and down because you always want outlines and here to be on the top and all of the colors and stuff below that. So now we have our mask. Let's just create a simple figure, maybe using the rectangle tool or maybe pencil, pen, anything, just cover everything and change its color to something more natural. Like this can be a good skin tone. See, this is somewhat realistic skin tone and I actually like that. If you also want to copy this, you can always use this hashtag, ED 9169. You can copy this and add this into your Illustrator color picker, or you can say the color panel and you will be good to go. You will get the exact same color. So this is how you do it. Now, one more thing is if you are a person who makes vector arts, again and again, you can always make a new layer and make different rectangles or squares or any kind of figures here. Now, this is going to be a base color for every vector. And then for the other parts, you can always change that. Maybe this is the dark one. And then we can have this fun for the darker version. This is going to be the lighter tone. And here we have the highlights. So when you do this, you actually have like color palettes for yourself. Then you can just click on your vector, or you can say element of your vector and just press I on your keyboard to get color picker and change the color. See, this is that easy. So it is also advised to make color palettes for yourself using like these squares. So this is how you make swatches for yourself. And then you can just export these swatches as a different document. Like go to File, Export and Export As and then export. These are different document and then place them just like we placed picture. And then you will be good to go. You can just pick these colors every time you are making vector art. So this was all about making the base color inside Adobe Illustrator for your vector art. And when you have your base color, when you will fill up your lips and eyes, you will already have a flat vector art and actually a flat good-looking vector art. So this was all about this lecture. Meet you in the next lecture soon. 7. Eyes and Lips: Now we already know we have created this so far. We did the outline work we made here and then we went for the base colors. Now the next thing that we're going to do is the eyes and the lips. And for that, we will make separate layers. So we will just create a new layer. And here this time, you will follow the same exact format that we learned for the base color. We will zoom in, delete, focus your lips. I mean, the vectors lives and we will change its name to lips. And now we will create a mask in the same way that we did for the base color. And this is going to be a quick one because most of the part of the lips is covered inside the beer and stuff. And here it is almost done. So as you can see, we have completed it already. Now you can just move it below outlines there. Remember that don't move it below the color layer this time because if you will move it below, it will actually vanish. So here we have the lips. Just click on this button. And obviously the mask has been created for your lips. Create a new rectangle and now color the leaves. Now for the lip color, you can go for something like maybe this will go here it is, like good. And then you can lock both of these elements, the mask and the base color, create a new sub layer and begin drawing. For example, you can give a better shade, maybe a bit darker one to the upper lip. And here it is. I just do it using the pencil. If you do not have a tablet, obviously you will be going for pen tool, as we have discussed earlier. We gave it a darker color, actually, the mood, right? You go, the more brightly-colored you will have, and the more bottom you go, you will have the more darker color. If you go towards the left, white will be element that will be added to your color. And if you go towards the upper side, you will be getting more dried. So this is how you are going to get your careers. For example, if this is your base color, you move right and down to get a darker variant, and you move up and left to get a brighter variant. So here it is, the dark element for the lips. And then we will be drawing some random figures alongside the borders. Just for the purpose of shading the lips the same dark. And here you can see, I figured is not leaving the area of the lips. And that is just because we made a clipping mask. Actually the making of this clipping mass saves you a lot of, I mean, a lot of a ton of effort just because when you create a clipping mask, once, you do not need to be worried about the remaining figure just because you can draw like anything. As you can see. I'm drawing like anything here, but if there was no clipping mask, I will obviously have to be cautious about these boundaries and these borders every time when I'm going to draw anything. So we will be adding some different shades for the lips. Obviously. This was a nice colors, so we make it less. And just a bit more like this. Actually, your lips have a color and then the light falls on Eric and your lips get different kinds of colors. You can actually see that in different kinds of photographs. When the light falls on your left, some part of your lips turns darker and the same red or pink color becomes darker at some point, becomes lighter. At some point, sometimes you'll get the change and the variation of the seasons. Stuff also happens. So this is going to be at the bottom. Maybe like this point. Yes. These are our lips. So far. Maybe just change the opacity of the black part. And that is just to make sure that everything blends perfect. This is all just a game of, you know, the practice and how you like it more. And now we'll be creating some of the highlights for the list, like the parts where light is falling here, right one, a bright patch actually. Similarly, on the spot. A bright patch. So here are the lips. And just turn this into something more natural like this. Okay, so we're done with the lips for now. You can just log the ellipse layer and then create another layer for right. Now, don't confuse this with the perspective. Actually. We are seeing the left eye of the vector has the right eye and right eye of the vector has left eye. But don't confuse this, just name it. Again. We have the I. We're on a new layer, we will be creating a mask again. And here is one more thing that you will learn right now. As you can see, our mask path is going black and we can not see that underneath the black outlines. You can always change that by double-clicking your layer and changing its color to something else. Maybe sound, great, and C, We are done. So these are the small bits of illustrated that you learn when you are falling up, something like maybe a tutorial thing or maybe you are learning vector. You're learning some of the stuff that you can do using Illustrator, like making a brochure or anything like that. So we have this, again, we'll be making a clipping mask. And this time we are going to move this into white. And after moving it to white, we are adding some layers for the shading of the whites of I. And here it is. We will be moving it to something like dark tea or maybe a light one. This time, a light gray. And the borders would be darker. So here it is. And we're almost done here. Here it is. See eyes look way more realistic. Now you can hide all of these layers and you can hide them just by holding the left mouse button and dragging. So hide the color layer and even these layers except for the mask. So it will be easier for you to track where it's eyeball is. Now press M on your keyboard or hold this and go to the Ellipse tool. Make a circle that perfectly fits with the eyeballs. So here it is. We have it turn its color into black, or maybe just pick it up from the base. This is good. When you have it. You can again go for another ellipse for the eyeball or the pupil auditory nerve, whatever you call it. So here it is, your eye. And to give it more natural look, pick up the base color and then move it towards a bit darker and the same old fashion, a bit trite and a bit down, and then shade this part with some color or dark color of this leaf. And after that, again, pick ellipse tool, go for your vibe and make some random shape ellipse. And that is going to be like for the light shades are the reflections that we see in our eyes. Here it is, our eyes looking great. And now we have to do the same thing for the left eye. Again, a new layer name, it has left eye and make a mask. Do the base color and stuff. To save you some time. I'm going to fast-forward the Spark, so just enjoy it. One thing here is that you don't need to go again and again for the eye color or anything like that. And to make your both of the eyes match pretty well, you can always pick colors from the other eye that you made. For example, I picked up the white first, then the light-colored, and now I'm going to pick the darker one. And similarly, I will turn it off like this. Turn the color layer of open the href and make the eyeball. And this desert. And after the eyeball renewed the basic colors. So you can just go here. We have it. Now, the black color. We have it. For the same thing. The sheets, we will meet debt. And here it is. Now the same old white ellipse. We completed our eyes. Now, you can move these ellipse a bit closer. And this is by far our vector and it is looking good to be honest. This is looking like a flat vector. And I guess even if you send this to your client with obviously the coloring of the clothing, he will be happy. So this was all for this lecture. By five, we have created outlines here, base color, lips, eyes at sector. Now we're just going for the facial shading and the clothing, etc. This was all for this lecture. See you in the next lecture soon. 8. Clothing to Complete Flat Vector: We have completed the flat vector by far. So let's just continue towards the completion of the same flat vector by adding some clothing. For the clothing, we will again make a new layer and make sure it is below here and the outline part. And then you can name it floats. So now you can do one of the two things here. You can either make a clipping mask by going from here all the way towards here and then taking care of all of the neck and parts are you can either move this layer below the color layer and then make a mask cautiously towards or over this outline and then go rough and this part and then go towards the end. I will be going with the second option. That is because that's going to save me a bit of the workload. So let's just use pen tool. And we will be going towards the end here and the same. And then we will zoom in a bit. Move this a bit towards the end. Actually I'm holding control on the keyboard to move the ankle using the direct selection or the snap two button. So here we have our mask going all the way towards the top. Then you know, we can go. And this part because we have our layer below the color layer, which extends all of this neck. So it is we have got the layer done. We have this again, we will just create the mask and add a shape, and then add a color to the shape. Let's see what he was reading in the reference. Okay, it's kind of a dark t-shirt. So we can obviously give it some maybe light gray shade. So here it is. Then for the shading part, we can obviously lock both of these layers, create a new sub layer, and go with the pen tool for the mouse users and pencil tool for tablet users. And here it is, and give some dark color to it. And how we get the dark color, obviously, right? And down. And here it is, the dark color. This dark color should be around the neck two. And that is because in most of the t-shirts, we have this part a bit darker because we have the stitches around all of this area. And then we are going for the borders again. The shading actually helps a lot when you get the dark borders. And then you draw something in the lower part of the middle. And that is also a bit darker, but that dark is the font that blends with the original color. And this is the basic principle when you are going for shading. So here it is. A bit dark. See, we have got our clothing and to make it blend better, what we're going to do, obviously changing the opacity. And here it is. We have done our clothing so far. What we can do now is lock the layer and move towards the next lecture. 9. Shading Darks: Now we have a flat vector art completed. Let's move towards shading of the dogs. Now, for the shading of the dogs, you can either create a new layer and a new mask and stuff like that, or you can just be a more sensitive and lock the base color and clipping mask layer inside the color layer and create a new layer. And you can call it the darkest. Because we are going with, for shading layers this time, we will go with the darkest, darker, brighter, and the brightest, or what we call highlights. We are on the dark guest. Now. What we will do is color, pick the base color and move it to something darkest, maybe darker actually. So you can either go here with your basic anatomy or just turn on the reference layer and check which parts are the darkest compared to the base color. And obviously this area and under the eye and this inner part is going to be darkest. So we will be doing that. Let's begin with the ear. Again. You can use pencil tool. If you are a tablet user and mouse. If you are actually, you can use pen if you add a mouse users. So I'm just growing on all of these lines and head it is. Now we are going to create a straight line out of this like it is extending through out and blending inside the eye. No worries if you mess up the eye because that is going to be below the eye Kelvin because we have the eyelid up on upside. So you can see, let's blend mode. And this is it. Now. This is going to be part of the face that is away from the light because light sources like this. And then we will be completing the nose here by extending from this side and portraying it in the most beautiful way we can. And this is going to be like this. Is this desert. Actually, I would say we can it is this part. And just keep it a bit darker this way. And then we will use the color that is a bit lighter than this, the darkest one. And we will use that to shade. So now by five we have completed the nose part. And then we will go for the boundaries and actually their darkest colored suits the boundaries because we actually have the hair part and some here base growing out of that part. So darkest color suits. And let's complete this across the beard stuff. And here it is. Make sure you don't mess up the ear. Because that is also inside our clipping mask. And here it is. The more time you spend on the shading, the more realistic thing you are going to get as this part of Nick is going to be under the beard. So it must be darker because the beard, but obviously be stopping the light from falling on this part. So here it is. And also the brows will be obstructing light and you will also be having some small hairs. So we are also going to portray those using the guest possible color. And we're going to be done in a few seconds with the darkest color. Here we go. We are done with the darkest right now. You can just add one layer with the name blacks and fill up these nostrils. And here is just make it up sweet and simple to Black. Similarly, on the other side, turn it to black. So we have the darkest part done. Or maybe we can do a bit by adding some of the darks here. Under the nose part. This is going to create a good depth of field or the shadow. This is going to create a good depth. And here it is, We're almost done. This was enough for the darkest shades, so you can lock this layer. So now we have done the darkest. Let's make another layer, which we will call it dark. And don't forget to move this layer under the darkest part. So here we are going with another color now, which is obviously less darker. You can check whether this color blends perfectly or not by making a patch on the skin and seen. So this blends perfectly. Let's start with the next part. Here. We're going to make the border with that. And it is simple. Now for the ear will make boundary. And then blend all of these species. Again simple. Now let's go towards eyes. This is not going to be simple. So we will be going from here towards the end of the eye, like this. And it is part C. We will also extend this now from the upper part like this to make it a proper face patch. Here we are light. This. And let's move from this. Like the lower part is going to be cheeks and we are on the upside part is like a proper patch, is actually testing with those small shapes. So here we have a proper batch now for the darker area. Now let's go for the other part. And this time we will be going for like this again. This is how our face batch will be this time. Extend this two out because this is going to be the proper patch. See, let me explain you this a bit in a new layer. For example, let's look at this is the face. You see, this is the phase. You have a base color on it, and then you have to add some darker, darker, and lighter layer. So what we do is we go like this. And this part will be the darkest one. Let's add an outline. So this part will be darkest. Then we add another batch. This is the darker, and this is the lighter. This is the lightest. This is one way of shading. This is like the most easiest way of shading and that also helps the beginner to go for the other aspects of shading. I'm doing this right now, like we added the darkest one and now we are adding the darker parts. It's going well for me. It is. Also don't forget to go for the nose. And this part and BU for almost this. Just like this. See, now we will be completing this by going like this. So we got a proper patch, right? This is a proper batch of a layer that is a bit darker. And by clicking on this, but we'll select everything and then we will manage the opacity to blend it a bit better. And it is blended a bit vector. You can always add another layer. Maybe this is going to be looking good. See it properly covers up this part and this. So we have this now. Then we will be adding another layer. And this layer is going to be on top of darker and darker. And this will be named as simple, maybe dark, but actually it is going to be for the compensation of the colors. So we will go like least dark. And this is going to extend on the different regions. Drop it below the darkest one. And also turn it. A bridge like this. Yes. Similarly, we will be going like this. And here we are, this face batch. And then we will be going this face batch. See, it is looking good now. It is properly having different kinds of layers. Now, Let's just give it a proper color. And I would say the color is not blending perfectly. School with the same base color. Something like this. This is good. Now. See we have got another layer. And this was all about shooting Dogs. You can always add highlights for dogs, like all. You can just do that inside the black slip by going here. And because these part of i's are actually more dense. So you can just give them a color and drop down the opacity a bit. Similarly for this part. And to give it the exact same look, you can just press I and obviously opacity will also be copied. This was all about shading of dogs. Were there this an almost 1234 layers out of which one was the darkest, dark blacks. And some color fixing layer. 10. Highlights: Now we are towards the last stages of completing our vector art. We just need to draw the highlights and then just a background. And we will be done. So far. The Brights are the highlights. You will obviously go in the Color part and create a new layer. Click on the Layer and click on this button to create a sub layer. And this sub layer will go between the darkest and the dark parts. Maybe just let it above here, above the dark parts. So now we are going for the bright part. So again, filter out the base color and choose something which blends the deck perfectly. And now we will be drawing the lights. For the lights again, you can just go like this part. Let's see if it looks good. Okay, so it actually kind of lens, but it's not perfect. Let's just keep trying a color that we like. Base it out. And here it is. Let's see if this color is going to help us. And here we are. This color. This is kind of good. Let's drop it below. Here. This is like a bitcode, not the best one. Again, filter out, and Here we are. This is not looking good. Let's try again. Actually just keep trying until you get the color that you want. We actually want it to blend perfectly with the scene. So this is not doing that, so we can always modify its opacity. So here we are. Now you can just go for this part and the nose. Like the light is falling on it. So it is and just try to blend it properly. See, here it is. Again. Some part, some part of the cheeks here just for the satisfaction. And maybe a batch on the forehead will work great. Just like this. Now for the eyes, we actually have that already, so let's just fill it up. And it's looking good to me. Let's just lock this layer and add another layer. And I already told you that we will actually have to keep on adding the layers again and again and again and again just to make sure that we get some good-looking vector. And when it comes to vector art and shading and stuff, all of the things or just the addition of layers with different colors, different variants of the base color, and nothing else. So here we have this. We can go into like this already. Some thing like this, okay, So this is good. Let's just try to blend it perfectly. Like maybe this. Okay, So we get deleted. And you must have seen by now that I am actually adding some dogs also when I'm discussing the highlights part or the white part. So that is okay, Actually there is no hard and fast rule for their doubts and whites and blacks and stuff. This is just to make sure that you learn something that you have to play with the colors in this regard and in that regard. But you actually have to just add colors to make the vector look better until you get the short, the place where you actually kind of like the vector that we have achieved something that at least semi realism or at least something that viewers will light. So just keep on, just keep trying that stuff and you will get to that as soon as possible just by practice. So maybe let's move it. Now. This is not looking good. Just fill the eyes. Is this looks fine. And this is pretty much it. Now, the one layer that we're going to add above the blacks is going to be the actual highlight layer. And that is actually the most, you know, the testlet that is actually for the part on which actual light shines like the sunshine and stuff. So you know, here it is. And these are actually usually just a bit of the part like the nose and some part of the cheeks. Just like this. Like a bit of the patch of the skin that is actually a bit raised and more effected by the sunlight or light, etc. This is gonna be pretty much it. You can always modify its opacity area. This is our final vector. You can always add more and more layers. As you can see, we have 1234567 layers of shading. You can always add more. You can add more colors, you can add more natural colors. You will be getting more and more better results by doing that. This is pretty much it that we wanted with our vector. We learned about our clients, we learned about basic shading, we learned about the clothing and stuff. We learned about gradients and this is our vector. So let's just go towards the final lecture. 11. Framing and Export: As you know, vector art is completed now, but you know, the white background is not the thing. Actually we are even the clients look for, so we will just add a background for it. For the background, we will add another layer, go with the rectangle tool and create a scared. And here it is. Then we will go towards outline, add an outline. Black color will work fine, increase the stroke of it. And here it is. One thing you need to know is you have to actually duplicate this layer. By moving it towards this part. The layer gets duplicated. And here you have to turn the color off. So this is going to be your frame and this is going to be your background. Now for the background, you can obviously go for a gradient, maybe something like this four-color gradient. This looks good. But still we are going with the circular gradient. And we will modify colors like this and something like a blue maybe. Yes, this is fine for me. Maybe on the beta of the green there. So this is comparatively good. I'd say we have this now. The last thing that you can do is add your signature or your copyright here you can add your logo. The logo. You can just go to File, Place and place your logo image or for your signature, you can go with the brush tool, pen tool, and even text tool by just typing it out. This was all about making the vector art. And you have done it. Congratulations, you have learned how to do it. This was pretty much it. Now to export or just go to File and then Export and click on Export As. And just press. Okay, I'll go to Export and Export for Screens. And here you can add a scale to it and then just locate the area where you wanted to export and click on Export Artboard and it will get exploited. So this was all for this learning session. 12. Class Project: Congratulations, you have completed the class learned making vector arts in Adobe Illustrator CC. Now because you have learned everything regarding vector arts, it's time for you to give an honest feedback and make a class project and then upload that on Skillshare. So for the class project, you will obviously need an image and you can get that image on any stock website like Unsplash story blocks, Canva, I stock, et cetera. But you can even use your own picture, your friends or your family. By far, in this learning session, you will learn about Illustrator interface, workspace of illustrators, some tools, how to import images. We talked about the steps required to make a vector. How is it different to use a tablet and mouse? How to do outlined with birch, how to use pencil for here. And after that, we talked about making mask for base colors, some colors and shades, how to use gradients for backgrounds and in the end exporting. This was all for this learning session. We will be back with another class soon. Tilden, take care. Bye-bye.