Graphic Design Courses > 
Dec21
Utilizing brush strokes in Illustrator is a good way to add dynamism and interest to existing artwork. There are several brush libraries which come with the program, or you can create your own custom brushes. We show you how in our Adobe Illustrator courses. If you can’t see the Brushes panel, first go to Window drop-down menu and choose Brushes.... Read more...
Dec7
The Knife tool is one tool among many for cutting up and dividing objects in Illustrator. We explore them all in our Adobe Illustrator courses. In the example here, we have used the Knife tool to help create the ladybird. After creating the body with the Ellipse tool – see another blog post on this tool – we cut it... Read more...
Nov22
Adding effects to shapes in Illustrator is straight-forward, and easily edited later. We explore all these features in our Adobe Illustrator courses. Firstly, we create some shapes in a new document. The example shown here is our froggie greetings card image. See a previous blog post to find out how we created the basic shapes. We now want to add... Read more...
Nov11
The Ellipse tool in Adobe Illustrator is a very versatile tool, and as can be seen from the screenshot here, can be used to create a variety of shapes. We explore it fully in our Illustrator courses. The Ellipse tool was used to make most of the frog card image here. We’ve highlighted the ellipses in red. First of all,... Read more...
Oct26
Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based drawing program and, as such, all artwork is created as mathematically based shapes. There are many tools in the program for creating shapes – we show you a variety of tools & applications in our Illustrator courses. To create the illustration shown here we would first create a new file, for example 100 x 100mm... Read more...
Oct12
Creating maps using Adobe Illustrator is an easy process involving a few simple steps. We show you how in our Illustrator courses. First create a new document, A4 size for example. Then Place your reference image – this could be a map from Google Earth. Tick Template from the File > Place dialog box. This puts the image onto a... Read more...
Sep28
Joining lines in Illustrator is necessary when you want to join two halves of an object into one single shape. We show you how in our Adobe Illustrator courses. The technique would be used to create the garment designs shown here. Firstly a photograph of the garment would be placed, ticking the Template box in order to easily draw around... Read more...
Sep15
Template layers are used in Illustrator when tracing an image manually. We take you through the whole process in our Adobe Illustrator courses. Template layers are locked, semi-transparent layers used when tracing over a placed image with the Pen or Pencil tools. Create a new document, then go to File > Place > and navigate to where your image is... Read more...
Sep1
Creating interesting text effects in Illustrator is straightforward and fun. We show you how in our Adobe Illustrator courses. To create the top example, firstly type some text > make it 100 pts high > and choose a pale colour. Then go to: Effect > Warp > Arc > and punch in the following values: 10, -30, 0. Alternatively you... Read more...
Aug17
Ever needed to create rounded corners in Illustrator? We show you how in our Adobe Illustrator courses. There are several methods. One method is to use the Add Anchor Point tool to add a point near a corner on an existing shape, then use the Convert Anchor Point tool to draw out the curvature on that one corner. Another is... Read more...
