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Vector Illustration: 60+ Illustrator Tutorials, Tips and Best Practices

Adobe Illustrator is a powerful tool for illustrating various elements one can use for web pages and print design. However, it’s important to know what to do in order to powerfully use its tools and achieve certain effects. So, step-by-step tutorials can provide a lot of help, thats why we spent a lot of time searching for the best tutorials out there and the result was 60 remarkable illustrator tutorials, tips, best practices from some of the best illustrators and artists; besides you’ll also find references to brilliant illustrator portfolios out there. Let’s take a look at some of the best Adobe Illustrator tutorials we’ve found in the Web so far.

You might be interested to check other Illustrator related posts:

• 53 Killer Photoshop Illustrator Effects and Tutorials
• 30+ Outstanding Character Illustrations in Modern Web Design
• deviantART: 30+ Breathtaking Artworks
• Masters of Graphic Design and Illustration: 25+ Interviews

Tutorials

1-From Sketch to Vector Illustration- A technique of vector illustrating that takes a little bit more skill is starting with a hand drawn sketches.This tutorial will focus on that technique of vector illustrating.

2-Craft a Dramatic Vector Landscape Environment- This tutorial will show the intermediate Adobe Illustrator artist how to make a dramatic landscape environment.

3-Draw Your Self Portrait- Learn how to transform your photo into your vector self portrait. You’ll review techniques for tracing photos.

4-Complex Circular Design Techniques- This tutorial is split into 2 sections: The Rotate Tool, and a Custom Pattern Brush.

5-Creating trees in Illustrator- Green is in vogue and clients everywhere want natural imagery in their promotional material. Ben the Illustrator shows you how to create a fresh-looking tree.

6-Illustrator Tutorial: Figure Shading-
Drawing the human body is never easy, but shading it and giving it depth as well can be a real headache. A nice tutorial on figure shading by Russell Tate.

7-Texture- When working in Illustrator it’s nice to add textures that weren’t computer generated (like gradients or pattern fills). This is a step-by-step instructions on how you can create your own hand-made texture effects using a Chinagraph Pencil on simple Watercolor Paper.

8-Realistic Curtain- How to create a realistic curtain using the gradient mesh.

9-Wood Grain- Here is a quick way to create wood grain effect using the warp tools in illustrator.

10-Simple organic shapes the Illustrator way- Here is a nice way to create wood grain effect using the warp tools in illustrator.

11-Free Watercolor Brushes and Tutorial- How to create a couple watercolor brushes, and at the end of the tutorial you can download some Free Vectips Watercolor Brushes!

12-3D Logo Tutorial- In this Tutorial you will start with the making of a logo shape, going to rough 3D, and finishing it in Photoshop.

13-How To Create Your Own Vector Cartoon Character- Follow this tutorial to create your own vector character; Freddy the Fish.

14-Vector Polishing Techniques- This tutorial includes 9 Photoshop techniques that will show you how to add more depth, color, contrast, and texture into your vector art.

15-Chinese Bamboo- This tutorial will show you how to illustrate Chinese bamboo with Illustrator Symbol Sprayer and Mesh Tool.

16-ILLUSTRATE IMAGE INTO VECTOR- Basically, it is quite simple to illustrate an animate rather than a real object. Its color tone is simple and easy to apply. Yhis tutorial will teach you how to illustrate an image into vector.

17-Digital Art Tutorial - An old tutorial but worth every minute you spend on it.

18-Creating a Crazy Cool Logo

19-Create a Designer Font- How to break apart a font into vector bits that we can manipulate. This is a great way to add your style to a font or to make your own!

20-Swirl Mania in Illustrator and Photoshop- There are lots of ways to create swirls in Illustrator, in this tutorial you will learn 4 ways to create swirls, and by mixing them you will learn some very powerful techniques that will allow you to easily make tons of different styles of swirls and crazy sperm vectors.

21-Leather Stylin’ in Illustrator- How to create a quasi-realistic leather patch logo complete with buttons and stitching.

22-Create a Disco Environment with Twirl Tool, Crystalize , and Envelope Tool- In this tutorial you will see how to use envelope tool to create a Disco Ball , You will also utilize Twirl and Crystallize tool to understand its options .

23-Design Float Circle Icon- This tutorial will teach you how to create a Designer float icon using adobe Illustrator that will match with the awesome fasticon set.

24-Using Illustrator’s Mesh Tool as Nature Intended- How to use the Mesh tool to simulate nature’s way of colorizing things—in this case, a fallen leaf.

25-Vectoring Hair

26- Symmetrical Illustration: Thug Bunny!- This tutorial will go through the method of using symmetry in your artwork. Learn how to do half the work but still get the full benefit from your artwork.

27-Illustrator Shapes Tutorial - This is an Adobe Illustrator Tutorial on How to Make Shapes

Neat Tips & Tricks

28-Illustrator: The Tilde Trick-Holding down the tilde key, (the little squiggly line above the tab key, left of the number 1 on your keyboard.) while using a drawing tool will cause Illustrator to repeat the shape rapidly as you move your mouse.

29-illustrator Pucker and Bloat Effect- How to use the Pucker & Bloat Effect.

30-Live Trace- This article will show you how to use Illustrator’s Live Trace tool. Live Trace will allow you to completely convert photographs and other raster graphics into Vector graphics!

31-Save Time With Save Selection- Selecting multiple objects in Illustrator is essential to productivity. One of the best selection features in Illustrator is Save Selection.

32-Vector Effects- How to mix a photo with vector elements using Photoshop and Illustrator.

33-Blending Gradients in Illustrator- How do you make a gradient bend to the shape you are creating? The answer is in Illustrator’s under-used Blend tool. This tutorial will show you how.

34-Smart Scale object or Pattern- Do you know that you can scale patterns swatches by using smart scale?

35-Drawing with the pen tool- People often find it hard to get used to the pen tool in illustrator. Remember these three things and you will be rollin’ in no time.

36-A Gradient Brush?- Making a “gradient brushstroke,” that is, a gradient that will follow a path, rather than fill a shape.

Freebies

37-Vector Freebie: Illustrator Icons- Here are some free vector Illustrator icons! There are eight of the most-used Adobe Illustrator tools inside: both arrows, pencil, magnifying glass, hand, pen, brush, and eyedropper.

38-Sandwich Board Whitey & Wheaty

39-Colorful Illustration- Very beautiful dream like illustration in vector .eps format

40-The Butterfly Patch- A Sample Patch from one of the Tool Boxes available at aivault.

41-Free Vector Art – Spring Flowers

Best Practices

42-Midnight Terror by Matheus Castro

43-Madam Eninette

44-Bulgarian Jazz Festival 2008

45-He aint showing up hun

46-Bently Stamp

47-Lolly Zombification

48-Communion by Cristiano Siqueira

49-Dior Vector

50-The Swallowers of Pretty Things

51-Naketano

52-Fruit Tree

53-Overgrown

54-Drug Free Zone

55-Playstation 3

Illustrators Portfolios

56-James White

57-Eendar

58-Cris Vector

59-Maciej Mizer

60-Kacper Spala

61-Andrey Gordeev

Further Illustrator Portfolios

• Behance Network
• Cpluv
• 30 Insane Freelance Illustrator Portfolios Part 1 and 30 Insane Freelance Illustrator Portfolios Part 2.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 2:22 am and is filed under Illustrator, TUTORIAL.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.