The focus of this lesson is on the “Pen Tool”
Hints and Tips
- Some tools within Illustrator such as “Drop Shadow” cant be created as vector and appear as a rasterized image. In these cases you need to be careful and consider the final output and sizing of your image, or work out a way to create such an affect using other techniques.
- A handy tip when creating a brand’s identity across a range of media is to add different sized art-boards within the same file, as you can then switch between the different designs as you alter each. This is a useful way to gather the stationary and other promotional material together in one place.
- When enlarging an image across the art-board hold the shift key while dragging the image across the page in order to keep its dimensions accurate.
- If the picture has a blue cross then it is linked.
- When creating many lines that need to be styled in the same stroke profile, for such as details within hair, it is useful to unstick the "New Art Has Basic Appearance" option within the "Appearance" options on the right-hand side sidebar.
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| Fig 1 |
Shortcuts
- Shift+cmd+p = place image
- D = set colours to default
- Forward slash key = No fill
Importing Images
The best way to know for sure that an external image, such
as a raster image, is incorporated into the save file from outside the document
is to import the image by selecting File and Place. This option informs you of
how the software will retrieve the image.
Please note that the original image used as reference (as shown in Fig.1) is a publicity still for the 1953 film Niagara - all rights reserved to the original copyright holder.
Link button
If the image is linked it will always pull data from its file location, therefore if you don’t have the image placed where it was originally “pulled” from or you happen to move it then upon loading the illustrator file later, it will bring up an error due to it being unable to find the file.
If the image is linked it will always pull data from its file location, therefore if you don’t have the image placed where it was originally “pulled” from or you happen to move it then upon loading the illustrator file later, it will bring up an error due to it being unable to find the file.
If the link button isn’t ticked then the file is written
into the Illustrator file itself, so you don’t need to worry about where the
source file is. If embedded then you will need to delete the image and re-embed
the image after editing. This is because if you go back to the image’s file to
alter within say Photoshop, then you will need to manually replace the image
incorporated into the “ai” file.
Layers
Double clicking on image enables isolation mode (though it
isn’t needed for this task) to exit this press the escape key.
Lower the opacity of the first layer on which we placed the
photograph of Monroe and then lock it in place (fig.1).
In order for us to work on creating a trace add a new layer.
Tracing
Pen tool
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| Fig 2 |
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| Fig 3 |
Attribute of the path is a stroke(colour of line).
Trace around the contour of the face to start with and once
you have joined this up you can tweak areas such as harsh blunt corners.
The circle symbol, which appears shows that this would
create a closed shape. In order to create curved lines as you go hold down the
mouse button as you create each line (though for the first anchor point it
requires one simple click) and this will make the job a lot quicker and easier
in the long run due to not needing to alter each anchor point. Some tools in
illustrator don’t work with open objects so this is another issue to keep in
mind when working in illustrator.
Hold down Alt and click on the handle to adjust its position.
Click on the anchor to remove the last curve handle.
Selection tool (objects-groups of objects)
Direct selection tool( handles and anchor points)
When creating two neighbouring cures you can smooth the join
by selecting the circle and moving up.
After creating the outline of her face we now begin tracing
around the hair (Fig 2).
Once this step has been completed you can trace around the
shadow cast below her head (while tracing make the base outlines invisible).
Shadow
In order to create the shadow cast by her head simply trace
around the shaded area as seen on the photograph and then select a light to
medium brown hue which will compliment well against the peach colour used for
her skin-tone.
Finally take off the stroke to the tracing and select an appropriate
fill colour (Fig 3).
Eyes
Draw around the dark area of her eyes where she perhaps is
wearing eyeliner and then invert the foreground and background colours. While
tracing around this area be sure not to join up the end anchor with that of the
beginning anchor, as otherwise the shape required will not be in place.
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| Fig 4 |
For the eyelashes create a simple curve and then open up the
stroke options, add depth to the line by expanding the weight to size 4 and
then select show options.
While you have the lash selected hold down the
Alt key and drag to create a duplicate.
To create the Iris and Pupil
Hold down the shift key to create
a perfect circle and hold down Alt if you want to create it from the middle
outwards.
Use the Scissors tool to remove unneeded part of the shape.
When using this tool select one point on the path and select
a second point, this will bring up a dotted line to denote where the scissors
will take away from. Then using the selection tool delete this top half. Next
create the light highlight within the eye by simply creating an oval like
shape. Repeat this first step to create the pupil.
Select all elements of the eye and go to object in the menu
bar and select group. While holding down alt drag this across and then use the
reflect tool to create the left-hand side eye.
You may need to alter the angle of the eye and the pupil in
order to achieve a realistic look.
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| Fig 5 |
Defining the Hair
You can go back to the original image and trace over this to
get an idea of the type of shapes you want to use to present the shape of
Monroe’s curls. An easy way to do this is by creating another art-board and
while holding down alt(to duplicate) drag the original image to the new board.
You can use this as a reference guide. Or if you prefer to do this step
traditionally simply print off the image and use tracing paper to practise.
Facial details
For her nose simply create curved lines to imply the
curvature of her features(you don’t need to draw the whole nose and if you were
to do so this may look very odd when using fill or outline.
For the beauty spot simply create a small black circle.
Lips
Follow the same steps mentioned above. Though this time
after filling the shapes in with colour we can then add some black stroke lines
individually onto the top of the lip to give definition.
Eyebrows
For her eyebrows we have crated two simple curved lines and
then altered the profile style to width profile 4 and then applied a curved cap
as to soften the thick end of the brow.
The resulting image should look similar to that of my example below.
