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- Alright. So now we are taking our illustration
into Illustrator, but to get it there,
we can do two things. We can either scan.
Or if you don't have a scanner,
you can go ahead and take a photograph of your drawing.
Making sure you have a lot of light,
maybe use natural light if possible,
and then send that drawing to yourself
so you can open it up in Illustrator.
If you do have access to a scanner,
I have a few tips about scanning in your image.
So typically, I try to scan in my image at at least 200%.
So I double the size of my image.
I get like a nice large, large graphic.
And then I also try to make sure
that it's a high resolution.
So I start at roughly about 300 DPI.
At the minimum. I will do a 150 DPI.
But ideally, I start with 300
just so I have this really nice high-resolution image.
And I can use it, you know, in different places,
and not have to scan it in again.
So now my image is in Adobe Illustrator,
and what I want to do is make all of these lines
and shapes into vector shapes.
And I can do that using Image Trace in Adobe Illustrator.
And what you want to do first is select your drawing
using the Selection tool.
So you have your drawing selected,
and you want to go to Object,
down to Image Trace,
Make and Expand.
And usually, if you have an intricate drawing,
it will give you this message saying
that it might take a little while to trace.
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And you can see on my screen, that my image is now traced.
So now everything has become a vector.
Different points, different shapes
that we can now play with and add color,
make changes, and alter the drawing as needed.
But before we do that, the drawing is now all grouped
and it's all like one shape basically.
So what I want to do is go into the Pathfinder
and make some adjustments.
On my screen, I already have Pathfinder visible.
But if you don't see it on your screen,
you can go to Window,
and then down to Pathfinder to make sure that it's selected.
So what I want to do is break up all of my images,
all of my shapes.
And I'm going to use that, this little icon here
under Pathfinders, and basically,
it's going to break up all of the shapes that I have now.
But what it does also is it groups
everything together automatically.
So I want to make sure that it ungroups so that I can select
all of these different elements individually.
So if you go to Object, and then down to Ungroup.
Now, you have all these different pieces ready
for you to select individually.
So now I can go in and change color if I want to,
or I can delete a shape if I want to.
I generally, at this stage, like to just start adding color
to see how things look and then I can edit as I go.
So let's start there. Let's start by just adding some color.
For me, I like to go ahead and just go to my color palette.
Again, if your color palette isn't visible,
you can go to Window, and then have,
make sure that Color has a check mark next to it.
Make sure that's selected.
And I always like to work in CMYK.
I always imagine that at some point these would be printed.
I can always change it back to RGB.
But I find that CMYK gives me a better understanding
of how the colors work when I'm applying color
to my illustration.
I'm just going to throw in a color.
This is kind of like a deep pink.
And I like to use the Eyedropper tool.
So if I want this shape to be the same color
as this color that I just created,
I can just select that shape
and then select the Eyedropper tool.
And what I'm doing, for things that I want
to have the similar color or the same color,
I select them holding the Shift key.
And I'm just going to add any color here for now.
Another little trick.
So you can see, I have this shape here,
which is broken up with that text that I wrote.
You could see it's picking up all the little,
the letter forms, and I want that to be a solid shape.
I don't want that to have all those broken up shapes
within a shape.
So what I can do is go back to my Pathfinder tool here,
and I'm going to go ahead and just break it up again.
And actually, I'm going to move this over
so you guys can see what's happening here.
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So I'm going to use this tool, again, to break that up.
And then I want to also combine it.
And you can see that it fills in
and it becomes this one solid shape.
So that way it doesn't have all these complicated shapes
within a shape.
So I'm going to do that behind here.
So it basically just cleans up my illustration.
I'm trying to delete this black line
that's going around Angela, but it's connected to her eye.
So that means I have to go in
and break up this line here.
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And what I'm going to do, I'm going to draw a little shape.
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And just so you can see it,
I'm going to add color to that shape.
So you can see
what I did here.
This shape is going to cut away the line of my eye
from the line that's going around Angela Davis.
So I'm going to select that shape,
and select the line.
Then go to my Pathfinders tool here,
and then making sure that I'm ungrouping that.
And now I want to delete everything except this shape here.
So I am going to hold the Shift key to deselect that
and then delete. And now I have her eye.
Her nose still there, but that black line
that was defining all the parts of her is now gone.
One thing that's happening here,
as I'm deleting some of the line,
I'm not being, I'm not able to see
where some of the shapes are.
So what I can do is change all of those white shapes
into color so I can see exactly what I'm selecting.
The way I can do that is by selecting one item that's white.
So like this is part of her turtleneck
and I'm going to select that.
And if I go to Select, down to Same,
Fill color, so everything that's white.
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So I just picked a random color.
Doesn't necessarily mean it's going to state this color.
But just so I can see exactly
what needs to be added or changed.
All the lines need to be closed up.
And you could see this is an example of where
I didn't close this shape and therefore it became a line
within my drawing instead of a full on shape.
So in order to make it a shape, I need to close this.
And what I'm going to do,
just with the Direct Selection tool here,
I'm just going to select these points,
or I could just select two of them here.
I'm just going to drag them. Oops.
Just so that it overlaps so I can close this shape.
And using under the Pathfinder,
this is going to combine the shapes so it becomes one shape.
And then I can break it up and combine it again
to make it a closed shape here.
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So what I did was I broke it up here
and then combined it here.
So break up the shape, combine it,
and then it becomes a closed shape.
Now I want to go in and fix this section here.
This is where the Live Trace
didn't really pick up that well.
And what I can use is the Pen tool.
Now, you could go in and just use your sketch as a guide
and then use the Pen tool to redraw everything.
But I prefer not to work that way
because as I love how the,
sometimes the Image Trace will pick up some
of the details of the line
or making the line feel less perfect.
Whereas Pen tools can make it feel really, really straight
and boxy or sharp.
But in this case, I need to fill in where
that Live Trace did not work.
So what I'm going to do is delete the lines
that didn't come in that well.
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And then go with my Pen tool and kind of mimic
what that drawing was supposed to look like.
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And you can see that the line is really sharp
in comparison to the line that I have here from my drawing.
So what I can do is, first,
I need to make sure that this shape is selected.
And I go in with my Pencil tool
and I can make the edge a little less perfect
by just going along that edge.
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Let's see. Did it do it?
Yeah, there we go.
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So it has a little bit more of the line
that the rest of the drawing has.
And you can go back and look at your initial sketch
or you can look at your reference image
and see what are some things you can do or move
to make sure that the portrait feels a little bit closer
to the likeness of the person.
So in my case, you know, maybe I want
to squish the nose up a little bit more,
or move the mouth down or move the mouth up.
Those are little tweaks that you can make
to make it really feel like it's the person you're trying
to represent. Now I'm ready to add my final color palette.
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And that's it. Now we have our colors.
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