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Intro to Color & Texture

Lesson 1 from: Drawing with Illustrator: Color and Texture

Stewart Scott-Curran

Intro to Color & Texture

Lesson 1 from: Drawing with Illustrator: Color and Texture

Stewart Scott-Curran

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Lesson Info

1. Intro to Color & Texture

Learn a few simple tools and techniques that will help you bring added depth and dimension to your illustrations.

Lesson Info

Intro to Color & Texture

everybody. Welcome to drawing with Illustrator This team, we're concentrating on color and texture. My name is Stuart Scott current, and I'm gonna be taking you through the section. Hopefully is going to be pretty fun. This course is really for beginners with illustrator, you don't necessarily. I need to have any prior knowledge of illustrator Before coming to this, we did do the previous segment which was Crean Vector illustrations from scratch. So if you haven't seen that, you you may want to check that That will help you cree the illustration that we're about to add color and texture to, um but you doing necessarily need tohave Ah, huge knowledge of illustrator. This is really just use and a few simple steps a few simple tools and techniques that's gonna hello you to bring some added depth and dimension and vibrancy to your to your lane are illustrations. This isn't very independent, so you can be used in the latest version of Illustrator or you could be used in like an older versio...

n. This is these are tools that are consistent through all of the all of the versions. See doing me toe worry about being super up up to date with who is we're gonna be covering a variety of topics here. We're gonna be taking a vector illustration that we've already created. And we're gonna be prepping that for adding color. We're gonna be thinking about creating a color palette on creating complementary on contrast in colors on who we start to think about the theory behind that on how create a appropriate color palette is really key for adding tonality and dimension to your illustration. Um, Andi At the end of that, we're gonna hopefully end up with something that looks a little bit a little bit late like that. Like this on that can really add something some really nice dimensionality to your illustration. I actually just had this one printed on Laker on like a newspaper. And so you can see here that can, like you could really make something for quake eye catching. Okay, so what we're gonna do here is like, I'm gonna do like a really quick and truth telling some of my other work, which is, uh, come from a really simple in vector illustration, and Lee added color to it. You know, if you look at some editorial illustration that I've done for maps for for example, You know, if this was just like a black lane on a white background, they would probably be pretty confusing, right? But using color and using two and on using some pop colors for markers, you know we can start to build and a little bit of visual hierarchy there, Um, and it starts to make a little bit more sense as to how these things Lee against each other. You know, again like if this was just black Wing Blaine's on away background, this illustration on the Laughter's Los Angeles part of Los Angeles. That would really just be like a grid of lanes on a page, you know. But by starting to use color for where the green space areas are, um, on using different layers in terms of, like, tune and contrast, we can start to think about how, like artery roadways lie on top of side roads, and you can start the build in some visual hierarchy There. This was a project that I done for the national parks. This was the the 14 weeks of summer, and how you can visit you should maybe visit a different national park every week on DWI used illustration, and we used a fairly constrained color palette, um, to have those sitting Eisley as a series. But then again, like have, um individual. And you can see again, like who? We can use color. And we can use twins of a color palette to start to build like dimensionality into these illustrations. You know, if all of those like Mountain Reggie's were the same Tor and they were just going to say on top of each other and it would feel pretty flat, right, you know, and you can see these when we've built these. Oh, that's That's a technique that we've used in almost all of these baggies build and using Tord using some texture and really brings like a lot of visual visual interest, you know, like especially here when we have, like, a variety of different, like reds and purples, really, it can help draw your eye and to the illustration right here, where we can use, like a greedy int, perhaps to like, suggest late and suggest dimension. And also with you, we can use maybe like a like a coat, maybe like a silly way that sits on top of other elements again gives us, like a sense of scale in the sense of depth. Again, you can see her. We use similar techniques. Ah, similar, uh, twos. Similar color palettes that set fairly well within the same zone on Beacon. Create something that fuels are, like, relatively cohesive a za group. So what are we gonna be creating today? We're gonna be taken the illustration that we we did before. Uh, and we're gonna be adding color and takes your to it to give it some dimension to give it some shape and just to give it some, like visual hierarchy Onda vibrance on, you know, as I should it's gonna end up like something like this. Something like, hopefully something pretty eye catching. Okay, So what is jumping? Let's jump into the illustration that we that we already created. This was in the last segment. We span a little bit of tame, um, Creon. These elements from from shapes, it's been a little bit of tame copying and pasting them on, bringing them in front, sending them behind. We used some visual reference to build up, um, these hoses and the charge stone here. And then we also, uh, I spent a little bit of time building and these chips to the center of the illustration. The concept wars. Dylan Thomas his undermine good play for radio from the mid forties Concept is that there was sleepy Wellstone, um, quit on the surface over everything. Looks can a relatively normal, pretty quiet standard tone where, you know, people keep themselves to themselves. But behind the cardinals behaved the hoses, the blues people with the old have the reward seekers. And so there's a certain underlying, like slightly menacing tone toward the surface. Seems like pretty normal and pretty count. So the concept behind behind this, uh, this was possibly gonna be a poster, um, was to take some of the visual cues from war. The intro to that place suggested. So it talked about the turn, talked about the church where, which was like the meeting place, whenever, where everybody came, came together, talked about being a turned by the sea. It talked about how it was in the country saved, and the mountains was kind of like a slightly menacing backdrop. Um and so I thought about taking those elements and maybe using the negative space and how we plea with the composition of those elements to do something that kinda looks a little bit more menacing. So this is, you know, supposed toe look a little bit like a school with the eyes and the noise. And in these four little trees that maybe look like teeth. Okay? No, as it stands, has Lika as, like a lane illustration. It looks pretty good. You know, it looks looks pretty tape. Um, some of these elements are starting to get lost a little bit, right? You know, we talk about these being teeth, but can you really tell that from on first pass? Maybe? No. Okay, so if we use called a take color palette has got a little bit of contrast bow and we can probably try And, um, you know, bring a little bit more vibrancy to that and make make it look a little bit more obvious.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Stewart Scott-Curran - Color and Texture Illustrator File.ai

Ratings and Reviews

Anita
 

This is one of my favorite classes ever! I watched Stewart's first class on Drawing with Illustrator and loved this second part on working with color and texture. As soon as I saw the artwork he created for his classes, I knew I had to take them...his artwork resonated so strongly with me, I HAD to learn how he did it...I learned so much from this course...I work mostly in Photoshop, and work with gradients more than half the time, and had no idea I could do so much more with gradients in Illustrator. Stewart did a wonderful job of explaining each tool and setting he used, and I loved how he explained his creative process as he worked through each step...I'm excited to put to use all that I've learned...I highly recommend this course!

Robert Mathas
 

This is my first real project in Illustrator, having taken a different Creative Live bootcamp and then Stewart's classes. Yes, as some commented, some of it is slow and repetitive. However, I liked the the idea that it was a simple enough drawing that I could customize and eventually finish. I learned most from the mistakes I made, not exactly following Stewart's directions, and having to figure out how to fix them. I was pretty happy with my final result. Interesting enough, watching a lot of TV during Covid, I actually saw a commercial (can't remember what...maybe medical center or health group) of a white outline city and rounded trees and clouds so I was able to see this technique in the real world. :)

EKerger
 

This was such an amazing class! The instructor did not move too fast and was very specific and clear throughout. I learned so much and would recommend it to anyone.

Student Work

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