Aug 26
33 comments 2008 at 08.04 am posted by Veerle
Today I’ll talk about how you can recolor your artwork in Illustrator CS3 using the LiveColor feature. I’ve always wanted to talk about this feature, but somehow I never got to actually doing it. I believe this is a rather powerful feature that might be a bit daunting at first sight. It definitely needs some getting used to before you actually see or understands its power.
Aug 19
34 comments 2008 at 01.53 pm posted by Veerle
About a week ago I received an e-mail from Sam Brown, wondering how to create a shape that looks almost exactly like the Apple Command key icon with an interesting four colored stroke depth effect to it. First thought that came to mind was “ideal for another tutorial"…
Aug 11
25 comments 2008 at 09.40 am posted by Veerle
Starting with simple shapes as a basis for your design can give you surprising results. By trying to apply them in a creative way and by experimenting you can end up with an amazing design. Today I’ll show you how to draw 4 simple shapes fast and easy. I’m thinking of the perfect wave line, the perfect heart shape, the perfect water drop and a diamond shape. They seem very easy to draw at first sight, though maybe you’ll learn a few tricks on how certain things can be done easier, faster or maybe just more prefect or natural.
Jul 22
50 comments 2008 at 09.37 am posted by Veerle
Sometimes I think “what could I create next?”. Why not start with just 4 lines and 5 color swatches and see from there? Use the tools at hand and see where it ends up. Surprising results happen when you do. Here is where I ended up…
Jun 24
21 comments 2008 at 09.19 am posted by Veerle
In my post from a few weeks ago, I demonstrated how to create simple organic shapes in Photoshop. In the comments a reader asked me “how to accomplish the transparency effect using Illustrator”. I thought why not showing the same creation in Illustrator while we’re at it. So here we go…
Jun 17
37 comments 2008 at 08.28 am posted by Veerle
A reader showed me this image with the question if I knew how to create this masking grid effect on the photo of this album. My first reaction was “Oh Soulstice Mixed Illusions I totally love this album” :) This grid masking seems like an interesting technique to take a closer look at. I’m sure there are many ways to excecute this technique and you could do this both in Illustrator or Photoshop…
Jun 03
45 comments 2008 at 10.25 am posted by Veerle
Lately I seem to be inspired by geometric forms and patterns in general, and today especially with a bit of an organic touch. I came across a very inspiring image months ago that uses an intersting technique, but I seem to have lost the URL. Today I thought of creating my own version because it seems like an interesting thing to explore. As usual I like to keep things simple. So I experimented a bit and I ‘ve found an easy way to create something that looks rather complex. Take a look at this…
May 20
26 comments 2008 at 04.33 pm posted by Veerle
Sometimes when I create a pattern background in Illustrator I don’t end up with a Pattern Swatch. Instead, I create a Symbol of the repeating element and I create a whole background repeating this Symbol: duplicating 1, then 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on. It’s just not always that simple to create perfectly seamless patterns, especially with geometric forms. Today I’ll show you how to create a geometric pattern shape and fill a background with it using the method I just described.
May 14
21 comments 2008 at 08.58 am posted by Veerle
I’ve mentioned the power of Smart Filters before in some previous articles. First the layer needs to be turned into a Smart Object and then Filters can be applied in a smart, non-destructive flexible way. Now I was thinking, how about text? Can we do this with text and keep it editable? In CS2 we can’t…
Apr 22
41 comments 2008 at 08.23 am posted by Veerle
Today I want to show you how you can create a spiral ornament in Illustrator and reuse this ornament throughout your artwork multiple times resized, rotated, mirrored, whatever… by turning it into a Symbol. I’ve talked about Symbols before and I showed you how to use the Symbol Sprayer Tool. This time I’ll focus a bit more on the creation of the ornament itself. Like always I’ll talk you through the entire process step by step. By explaining every little detail of each step, this tutorial should be a good exercise for the beginners among you. You’ll learn to use a lot of several tools along the way and you only use the Pen Tool a tiny little bit. Hope you enjoy and learn :)
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