1
Online Courses

LETTERING + GRAPHIC
DESIGN LEARNING

logo
mobile-logo
HomePosts Tagged "illustration" (Page 13)

illustration Tag

Hand Lettering, Holiday, Photoshop, Textures, Tutorials

I pulled some pretty long hours getting the Glitz + Glam Kit ready for the holidays because I knew it was exactly what I needed this year to push my designs further…plus, who doesn’t like a little extra sparkle + shine in their work ? 🙂 This week – whether you’ve picked up the kit yet or not (here’s the freebie texture from last week you can use!), we’ll create a holiday wreath in Photoshop with foil accents. We’ll go over creating and applying a custom brush to a path, adding a foil texture to it and even changing the color of the foil! I also share how I set up my Instagram files in Photoshop 🙂 Read on to see it all!

Continue reading
2 Comments
Illustration, Illustrator, Tutorials

Happy Tuesday! As we approach Thanksgiving month, I thought Katherine’s request for a tutorial on feathers in Illustrator was a great idea this week. Since no style was specified in her request, I decided to share how to replicate two styles I love – organic and geometric/iconic. We’ll go over a bunch of quick tips, like easily altering paths, applying clipping masks, expanding strokes and utilizing the pathfinder palette. At the end of this tutorial, you’ll have an organic and geometric/iconic style feather you’ll be able to apply any color or texture to, alter easily, and implement to any application in both CMYK and RGB. Read on to see how!

Continue reading
11 Comments
Color, Patterns, Roundups, Textures

Things have been all about watercolor typography lately – and having the versatility to create such specific detail with a waterbrush, I started to wonder – what else can I create fine detail in with a waterbrush? I am self admittedly not an illustrator – or painter for that matter. I’m a designer that has always loved to also doodle and create things with my hands. When I was young, I’d ask for an ‘art kit’ from the craft store every Christmas and birthday and I’m grateful my parents always found a way to deliver. I could doodle some legit cartoon characters (following an 8th grade standard), but realism or the patience to carry out long form artwork has always been MIA in my gifts department.

I’ve always had a passion for logic + mathematics (totally weird, I know – almost became a math teacher, but that’s another story). I think it’s probably the geometry of it all, but I am a complete sucker for textiles. Anyway, the idea of putting patterns and watercolors together prompted a pinterest hunt, which brought about this post today. If you like watercolors + patterns, this is some serious kind of eye candy. I had to make this post have a theme or I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from posting every beautiful piece of artwork I came across. So! Here are 10 dreamy watercolor patterns to go extra swoon-mode over 🙂 Happy Thursday!

Continue reading
2 Comments
Freebies, Hand Drawn, Illustrator

Today is an especially happy Thursday, because 2 years ago today was the very first Every-Tuesday post! I can’t believe how much has changed in that time and I couldn’t be happier delivering new design goodies and tutorials here every week. Speaking of design goodies – it wouldn’t be a proper birthday without a few design gifts! To celebrate 2 years, this week’s freebie is a set of birthday vectors as an ai, eps and psd for versions of Illustrator and Photoshop, CS3 or newer. See the full preview below!

Continue reading
16 Comments
Holiday, Illustration, Illustrator, Tutorials

Spence doodled out this adorable Frankenstein the other day and I just had to bring it to life in Illustrator! Since flat illustrations/icons are still very popular these days, I decided to draw it out in a flat illustration style with a half face shade and a long shadow. This would work great on a party invite, perched atop toothpicks on Halloween themed cupcakes, printed out life sized on a front door, or tied around candy goodie bags. This same style could be adapted for a ghost, witch, pumpkin and/or skeleton to create a full set. Video tutorial below along with the template sketch used in the tutorial!

Continue reading
12 Comments
Freebies, Hand Drawn, Holiday, Illustrator

This week’s freebie is a set of 10 hand drawn vector spider webs to add a little more creepy crawly to your Halloween designs this year. 😉 Set includes corner webs and full spider webs to make positioning, cropping and usage a piece of cake. A bonus couple of dangling spider vectors also included for good measure. 🙂 All vector elements are included as an ai, eps and psd file for versions of Illustrator and Photoshop, CS3 or newer!

Continue reading
9 Comments
Hand Drawn, Hand Lettering, Holiday, Illustration, Tutorials, Typography

Last week, I gave away some free October desktop wallpapers and I wanted to share how I created the typography before I digitized it 🙂 I’m calling it skeleton typography, since it was inspired by Day of the Dead sugar skull designs and we’re creating some decorative ‘guts’ for our type. In this fine art tutorial, we create our skeleton typography using 4 writing utensils and a sheet of 110# white cardstock. Get creative with your own Halloween typography this year using the same techniques for any words you choose! Read on to see how 🙂

Continue reading
4 Comments
Hand Drawn, Illustration, Illustrator, Patterns, Tutorials

Seamless patterns in Illustrator have been on my tutorial list for a while, so I’m very excited for this week! There’s something about the anticipation right before you test your pattern that I love. The total surprise when you see this pretty little square you made repeated a dozen times – suddenly the little square looks the same, but entirely new. And then go ahead and imagine it on your favorite throw pillow, mug, notebook, mousepad, comforter, wallpaper..it’s a great moment for a designer, even if they’re just daydreams 😉 My goal is to bring you one step closer to those daydreams this week with a method you can use to create seamless, repeatable patterns no matter which version of Illustrator you have. We’ll take a square with elements from the 100+ Vector Leaves and Flourishes pack and go step by step to achieve a fully usable pattern at the end – color palette included. Let’s go!

Continue reading
37 Comments
Color, Hand Drawn, Hand Lettering, Illustration, Tutorials, Typography

If you’ve been following my Instagram, you know how obsessed I’ve been lately with lettering using a waterbrush! It combines two strong passions of mine – watercolor and typography and I can’t get enough! Since I’ve been experimenting like a crazy woman, I wanted to share some tips I’ve learned over the past few weeks. I’m no expert by any means, but I’ve gotten into a rhythm and I’ve been really happy with how I’ve improved by remembering a few simple things. If this is something you’d like to try, my hope is that this video will save you time, money and supplies. Speaking of supplies, everything mentioned in the video that I’m currently using is listed below the vid 😉 For more on brush lettering with watercolor, check out my master course!

Continue reading
17 Comments
Illustration, Illustrator, Tutorials

After the Lovebird and Watercolor Popsicles tutorials, I had a few requests to create more illustration-based tuts (if this is something you’d like to see more of, please let me know!). Last week, Tamara made a request for a donut tutorial which I thought would be fun, plus it incorporates quite a few useful techniques I find myself using all the time. So! Even if you don’t have an appetite for some digital donuts, I promise you’ll walk away with something you’ll use many times in the future. In this tutorial, we’ll create 2 different versions of typical donuts in Illustrator utilizing the blob brush, scatter brush, paint streak textures and clipping masks. Let’s get started!

Continue reading
3 Comments
Hand Drawn, Illustrator, Tutorials

Happy Tuesday! This week’s tutorial is brought to you by Whitney + Monica who both emailed asking how to vectorize hand drawn doodles so they would have reuseable, and infinitely rescalable vectors. You’ve probably seen vector artwork around a lot lately – I just released a pack of vectors a few weeks ago and gave 5 of them away for free. In this tutorial, using that vector pack as an example, I share how I took those hand drawn elements from a doodle on a sheet of copy paper to a crisp vector that can be used over and over again on any application. Do you remember the how to vectorize hand lettering tutorial? If you’ve practiced that at all, you’ll be in great shape with converting doodles 🙂 In this video, we’ll go over 3 different methods of cleaning up your doodles, so whether you’re a beginner or advanced Illustrator user, there’s an option that will work for you. Let’s get started!

Continue reading
25 Comments
Freebies, Hand Drawn, Illustrator

I have been working well into the wee morning hours this past week preparing for my new Skillshare class coming early next week. I don’t want to give it entirely away, but there are some pretty vector elements + watercolor textures involved! I’m sooo excited about the class I wanted to give a tiny sneak peek of what I’ve been spending all that time on! Since vector elements play a big role in the class, I created a monster set of over 100 hand drawn vector leaves and flourishes. This set was created for people who may not want to spend as many hours as I did making them 🙂 Today I want to give away 5 of them for free!

Continue reading
10 Comments
GDPR Icon

Your Privacy Matters

We use cookies to customize and create content that’s most important to you. We’ll never share the info we collect.

View Privacy Policy
Got it