Noupe Editorial Team July 14th, 2008

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:

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.

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



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!

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



18-Creating a Crazy Cool Logo

illustrator tutorials


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!

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



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 .

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials



25-Vectoring Hair

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials



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!

illustrator tutorials



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.

illustrator tutorials


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

illustrator tutorials


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.

illustrator tutorials


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

illustrator tutorials


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.

illustrator tutorials



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

illustrator tutorials




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

illustrator tutorials


41-Free Vector Art - Spring Flowers

illustrator tutorials


Best Practices

42-Midnight Terror by Matheus Castro

illustrator tutorials



43-Madam Eninette

illustrator tutorials



44-Bulgarian Jazz Festival 2008

illustrator tutorials



45-He aint showing up hun

illustrator tutorials



46-Bently Stamp

illustrator tutorials



47-Lolly Zombification

illustrator tutorials



48-Communion by Cristiano Siqueira

illustrator tutorials



49-Dior Vector

illustrator tutorials



50-The Swallowers of Pretty Things

illustrator tutorials



51-Naketano

illustrator tutorials



52-Fruit Tree

illustrator tutorials



53-Overgrown

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54-Drug Free Zone

illustrator tutorials



55-Playstation 3

illustrator tutorials



Illustrators Portfolios

56-James White

illustrator tutorials



57-Eendar

illustrator tutorials



58-Cris Vector

illustrator tutorials



59-Maciej Mizer

illustrator tutorials



60-Kacper Spala

illustrator tutorials



61-Andrey Gordeev

illustrator tutorials



Further Illustrator Portfolios

Noupe Editorial Team

The jungle is alive: Be it a collaboration between two or more authors or an article by an author not contributing regularly. In these cases you find the Noupe Editorial Team as the ones who made it. Guest authors get their own little bio boxes below the article, so watch out for these.

81 comments

  1. Thanks for a great collection of resources here, will be checking out some of the as soon as I can! Bookmarked.

  2. What an excellent set of resources. This will be incredibly handy for learning, reference and inspiration. Thankyou!

  3. Thank you all for the wonderful feedback.

    This is the first part and the second part will be coming soon with more interesting tutorials.

    A couple of years ago it was really hard to find good Illustrator tutorials as Photoshop tutorials was all over the web but today many illustrators are so kind by sharing their experience and giving us those step by step tutorials.

  4. I always thought of “best practices” as the industry accepted process and procedure for any given task. Are the examples under the “best practices” heading meant to illustrate the result when using best practices?

  5. Thanks for featuring not one, but two of my pieces (Fruit Tree and Overgrown) in your excellent round-up. Some SERIOUSLY valuable info here.

  6. Wow, an absolutely fantastic roundup of some great vector and illustration tutorials, you have really excelled yourself this time. Well Done, keep up the good work.

  7. Thank you so much! This is an amazing list of Illustrator resources. This is the end of my free-time for awhile…

  8. 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.

  9. Very nice materials. I prefer the clip tutorials as what is available in aiblog.it or in you tube, but here I found a lot of good tips.

  10. What can I say for, wow wow and wow. Great list buddy I love all of it. Keep it up and share more great list and probably some interesting tutorials about web 2.0 styles.

  11. Very good list but This is a bit old list.
    My personal choice is tutorials99.com

    where all tutorials have a Higher page rank and professional.Very helpful for beginners…

  12. me encanta todo lus tutoriales, las aplicaciones las imagenes y los recursos que nos empapan de imagen visual.

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