﻿In today's tutorial you'll learn how to add photo textures and how to make all the way from
the pencil sketch to finished illustration. You'll understand how to trace your sketch,
how to apply colors from your own photos to your illustrations, how to export Adobe Illustrator
file to Photoshop with all layers and how to apply photo textures to your own illustrations.
You're watching T&T Tutorials, let's move on!
Here you can see all stages from a rough idea to clean sketch.
First, we draw a few different frames to see which proportions will work best for us. At this stage
we also draw rough sketches of the composition. It is very important to avoid any details. We
need to get a very simple and clear picture where the main object will be clearly highlighted.
Next you see a few examples of how the original idea evolves. We still avoid
details and try to concentrate only on the main objects: the character and the huge mushroom.
The environment that surrounds them should be secondary and simply supplement our picture.
These sketches can look dirty. You can forget about eraser. All you need is to find out what
you will draw exactly and how. The last stage is a clean sketch.
Its main difference from the previous stage is that now we first draw without any pressure on
a pencil and use an eraser. Follow the light contours with pressure on a pencil only when
you are confident in drawing - this will allow you to use the eraser less often.
Now that the sketch is ready, we can take a picture of it and continue in
Illustrator. By the way, you can download sketch, texture photos and colors on my Patreon.
Place sketch, apply Multiply blending mode, decrease opacity and lock sketch layer.
Create a new layer and bring it down. This is how you can see sketch and vector at the same time.
Use grayscale to trace all shapes. This will allow you not to think about colors
and simply pick different gray tones for different objects on a fly.
Use the Pen tool, the Shape Builder tool and the Blob brush.
Don't create too many anchor points with the Pen tool. It's very easy
to change shapes when you have a few points only or at least as less as it possible.
Drag handles a bit and hold Alt or Option key to make sharp corners.
To use the Shape Builder Tool select needed shapes,
press Shift + M, hold Alt or Option key and drag or click on unneeded area to delete it.
Blob brush is a bit more tricky and you need a tablet if you want to use it. I show how to
adjust the Blob brush in this tutorial, so check it out if you want to trace like you can see here.
Blob brush turns strokes to objects automatically, so to fill shapes I simply select a random inner
anchor point and press Ctrl or Cmd + X twice. You can trace everything with the Pen tool if you don't have a tablet,
there's no problem with that. This is how your complicated
illustrations should look like. Just take your time, give yourself a break, and trace
each shape one by one. This is a routine, which you should simply pass and move on.
I usually listen to podcasts or music while tracing, so I enjoy this process.
You can use any picture or a photo to color your illustrations. I show a few must know
coloring tips in this tutorial and today
I'll share another great way to do that.
I want to use colors from this photo, but they are not clean and bright enough.
Open your photo in Photoshop and click on this little icon below in the layers panel.
Choose 'Selective Color' and in Selective color menu switch between colors and play with
all that sliders. As you can see, you can change colors completely.
Let me show you how I adjusted sliders for this picture.
After you'll finish, go to File – Export – Save For Web – choose any format that you want
and click on save. Let's return to Illustrator
and place edited photo here. Select needed shapes and use the
eyedropper tool to pick colors from photo. If you feel that you want to play with colors more,
open Colors panel and adjust them. I always switch between HSB
and RGB modes. This allows to change colors extremely fast and easy.
Now we are ready to export illustration to Photoshop and apply photo textures. There are a
few crucial moments that you should pay attention to if you want to create illustrations like this.
I will explain why it's better to adjust textures in Photoshop, but first things first.
Take a look at all these layers. If you want a successful export from Illustrator to Photoshop
and have the same layers there, you should put each object into separate layer.
It takes time to rename each layer, so prepare to spend some time doing this.
Let's click on File – Export – Export As – In file type select PSD – copy settings from
this setup and click OK. File will be exported
and we can already launch Photoshop. Let's open exported file and take a look
at layers. Here they are, named, separated and ready to use.
Select needed object first when you want to apply texture to it. I'll select this one. Then
open photo textures, which you can find anywhere in internetor download on my Patreon, and drag them to your artboard.
Let's apply clipping mask by holding Alt or Option key and clicking between this two layers.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + T to change proportions and rotate texture and press Enter after that.
Click here and highlight blending modes to see which one will work the best for you.
Next that you want to do is decrease Fill and Opacity.
To make texture lighter, press Ctrl or Cmd + M to use Curves and adjust lightness like this.
You should not use one texture only. Take a look at how I apply a few textures
to work together. Notice how I transform textures, change blending modes and opacity.
Sometimes original color might be lost behind the textures.
This is not a problem since you know that you can use Curves. Apply them to your textures to make
textures more contrast or faded.
You can also use Levels for that. Press
Ctrl or Cmd + L to use them.
You can press Ctrl or Cmd + I and invert textures like this. I always invert
textures and check how they will look inverted, because picture can be absolutely different.
There is no such options as curves or levels in Adobe Illustrator but I have a few reasons more why it's better to apply photo textures in Photoshop.
You can completely erase some areas with the Eraser or change Eraser density and simply
make texture a bit more transparent. You can also click on this icon below
in the layers panel to create a mask, pick black color.
With masking we're not erasing, but simply hiding areas. So we can always reveal them.
It also feels much more comfortable to finish illustration in Photoshop.
You can use custom brushes to quickly add noise or details and your computer will handle this much easier
comparing to the same actions in Illustrator. Here is a few close ups for those who want to illustrate in this style.
Don't forget to press thumb up if you learned something new from this tutorial,
and also subscribe so you don't miss more useful tutorials like this.
Thank you all for watching and see you in the next video.