Drawing a cartoon is no trivial pursuit. It turns us into a director, writer, narrator. Through a cartoon or comic, you tell a story that takes place in a certain time, a certain environment, with certain characters. This is why you will learn here not just how to draw a cartoon in Adobe Illustrator, but how to decide on character, place and situation.
Before grabbing your pencil or... Read More
If you’re a graphic designer, you will often have to work with off-the-shelf material created by others — for instance, combining ready-to-use fonts with images from a photographer or stock website. Also, you’ll often have to follow the branding already developed by someone else.
It’s OK; it’s a part of the job, and you shouldn’t be bothered by it. But the part of a project that almost... Read More
Have you ever submitted design files to a development team for production and a few weeks later gotten something back that looks nothing like your original work? Many designers and design teams make the mistake of thinking that their work is done once they’ve completed the visual design stage.
A design is more than a simple drawing on a canvas in Illustrator, Fireworks or Photoshop; it... Read More
Water lilies are beautiful flowers and ideal tutorial material. To get to the final result you’ll do a lot of clever actions which mostly involve rotating and duplicating, and there is a lot of room for experimentation as well. For instance, you can try out different ways on how you build up the layers of petals, and play with different shades of pinkish gradients.
This tutorial gives... Read More
In my career as a freelance illustrator, map-making has become a favorite specialty of mine. With each map assignment, I virtually travel across the globe, visiting places I’ve never been. Most recent was a “trip” to New Zealand for a sampling of local Wellington beer for Draft Magazine.
My maps are designed to appear next to magazine stories about trips to faraway places, or about the... Read More
While vector based artwork lets designers take advantage of small file sizes and lossless scaling it can also be limiting when trying to add depth and richness to a design. Adobe Illustrator offers a plethora of gradient tools that can help artist produce more organic and vivid pieces.
This extended video tutorial covers a wide variety of topics including basic gradient tools (0:30),... Read More
People often ask how I arrived at a finished illustration. Honestly, it’s different every time, but it always starts with a hand-drawn sketch. Sometimes, I paint it completely by hand; sometimes I’ll scan in a pencil drawing. Many of my pieces are 100% analog that I’ll show only at shops or galleries. Use anything you can; if the illustration would work as a wood carving, go that route. There... Read More
Texture is becoming integral to design. It’s gone beyond being a trend — it’s now a simple and effective way to add depth to a website. Wielding the power of texture is a great responsibility. It increases the effectiveness of websites and is a quality tool in the arsenal of designers. It can guide the user’s eye and emphasize the importance of key elements.
However, texture has long... Read More
For drawing and painting digital illustrations, Adobe Illustrator is a favorite among designers for many reasons. One of the reasons is some of the amazing time-saving features that come with it. The Symbols feature in Illustrator does just this: it saves valuable time by creating a “symbol,” or copy, of an object. This means that all of the time you have spent creating a minutely detailed... Read More
