Fun with Adobe Illustrator

Access a whole new world of illustrating children's books!

This course will teach you everything there is to know about Adobe Illustrator! In 6 sessions you will be on your way to creating shapes, choosing thick or thin lines to draw with, applying a dotted or dashed look to them, and much, much more! Illustrator is a drawing and illustration program made by Adobe. It is the industry standard software for vector art images, and is used in applications for print and web media.

Why Illustrator instead of Photoshop?

Photoshop and Illustrator are both popular graphics programs, and there are obvious advantages in creating artworks using them.

• The primary difference between Photoshop’s rastor (pixel-based) illustrations and vector illustration is that Illustrator uses mathematical curves to create lines and shapes, while Photoshop images are constructed out of pixels (stacked like bricks in rows and columns on a wall).
  

• The lines and shapes in Illustrator are created by plotting a series of dots known as anchor points, with the result of clean, graphical illustrations that can be resized and reshaped after the initial construction, by manipulating the anchor points. Photoshop’s Pen Tool offers the same use of anchor points, but using lines in Photoshop is limited.
  

• In Illustrator, you can create a library of reusable components that can be reused and manipulated for future illustrations, without having to be created anew. This is great advantage in using the program, as it saves a lot of time!
  
  
• Illustrator artworks can be scaled up or down, without any loss in quality. So a small illustrated element can be resized without any repair needed. This is impossible in Photoshop, due to pixellation.
  
  
• Lastly, since Illustrator is not resolution dependent, your artwork can be printed or displayed at different sizes. You will never have to worry about the quality of your printed artwork, when it is created using Illustrator!
  
  

While Photoshop’s filters and image editing tools are more impressive than Illustrator’s, you can create an illustration in Illustrator and enhance it in Photoshop!

There are several children’s book artists who use illustrator for their artworks, such as Road Work Ahead by Jannie Ho, My Pet Book by Bob Staake, Ganesha's Sweet Tooth by Sanjay Patel, Eli No! by Katie Kirk & Nathan Strandberg, Hank finds inspiration by Craig Frazier, and the cover of Alien Alby by Sophie Rohrbach, among others.

Here's A Quick Peek!

Session 1: Session one is all about introducing you to Adobe Illustrator! You be given an overview of the Adobe Illustrator interface, learning the basics and all of the output options from Adobe Illustrator, setting Illustrator preferences, and importing your digital files.

Session 2: Your Workspace, Creating Shapes, Fun with Tracing

2A

• Creating your workspace in Illustrator.
• Modifying and navigating your workspace.
• Exploring Adobe Illustrator layers, panels.
• Saving artwork in different file formats.
  

Session 3: Stroke It Baby, Amazing Brushes, Drawing from Scratch and Color!!

3A

• Using strokes to outline shapes.
• Exploring different types of strokes.
• Creating art brushes.
• Customizing art brushes - pencil, marker, charcoal, other.
  

3B

• Coloring inside the lines.
• Coloring inside the lines (creating line art on top of irregular shapes for an arty look).
• Creating color swatches.
• Adding color to lines and fill.
• Using transparency.
  

Session 4: Bezier Curves (don’t be scared), Groovy Gradients (that don’t look hokey), Painterly Gradient Meshes, and Awesome Effects

4A

• Drawing curves using Pen Tool anchor points, segments, control handles.
• Adding, deleting, converting anchor points to change curved lines.
• Adding gradients.
• Using Illustrator effects.
  

4B

• Creating linear and radial Gradients.
• Creating a Gradient Mesh.
• Converting linear gradients to a gradient mesh.
• Shading with the gradient mesh.
  

Session 5 The Wonderful World of Type (including how to tweak fonts for a hand lettered look), Symbols, Patterns, Textures, and Masks

5A

• Creating type in Illustrator.
• Outlining type from your artworks.
• Creating text that flows around objects, or within areas of artwork.
• Changing type into vector paths for use in your art, and why.
  

5B

• Exploring Illustrator Symbols.
• Creating Patterns/Textures using Symbols.
• Working with Opacity Masks.
• Working with Clipping Masks.
  

Session 6 Next Steps Taking Your Illustrator Art into Other Formats, Making a Picture Book Dummy, Making Fun Little Animations.

6A

• Illustrator to Photoshop.
• Photoshop to Illustrator.
• Illustrator to InDesign.
• InDesign to Illustrator.
• Making a PDF children’s book dummy in Illustrator.
  

6B

• Exporting Illustrator as PSD.
• Exporting Illustrator as TIF.
• Exporting Illustrator as JPG.
• Exporting Illustrator as PDF.