COREL DRAW TUTORIAL

Intro

People usually think of vector artwork as cold, minimal and flat. Because it mostly is and that’s part of the charm of vector illustration.

Nevertheless, you can actually add a big deal of warmth, softness, texture and dimension in a vector environment. 

This tutorial centres some of these lesser known tools and techniques in Adobe Illustrator. You'll learn how to render convincing shadows and highlights, some best practice approaches to clean line art, the pattern tool, the warp tool, transparency, blur effects and overall adding a little more love to vector artwork than necessary. 

Idea

To demonstrate lesser known techniques in Illustrator, I wanted to show different textures such as glass, scales, metal, hair, and skin. 

We often say it requires a certain cocktail of skills to become an illustrator, so a surreal glass of gin seems a fitting choice of illustration.

I start with looking at some reference materials to get a broad idea of how light affects certain objects. 

Sketch

My sketches happen in Adobe Photoshop. 'Happen' probably sounds too accidental, as this is where all of the planning and contemplating occurs.

I like to keep my sketches quite close to the final result. That way I don’t have to fuzz over details or worry how to draw a hand correctly once I move to vector.

Line art

For the line art I only use the Pen tool, which is the most powerful tool in any vector environment.

I put the sketch on a separate layer with a blending mode of Multiply, so I can easily switch back and forth to see the sketch without affecting the overall colour scheme, as you only see the lines of your sketch that way.

Bezier curve tricks

A common trick to idealise shapes and lines is to press the Shift key while drawing your Bezier curves.

It’s also good practice to plot your Anchor points on the extremes of a form if you want the shape to look more perfect.

For organic forms there aren’t really any rules, but for any non-organic shapes it’s a handy technique to keep in mind.

Flat colours

To block in colours I need to redraw all shapes and put them on a separate layer under the line art.

Personally, I like to divorce line and shape, as it gives you more freedom to experiment with the line art compared to having shapes with an outline. 

Aside from basic colour theory I like to walk between the extremes of colour schemes. Adding neon colours that hurt a little to look at next to some muted pastels is an interesting contrast I like to play with.

Gradients

The first step to adding a hint of dimensionality is to use subtle gradients instead of flat colours. Just adding red hues to the darker parts of the face or more white here and there gives a sense of where the light source is.

It’s subtle but it lays the foundation on all the other effects and it’s a great tool to navigate your lights and shadows.

Shadows & Light

Once the light source has been established I plot my shadows and light points. I add the shadows into the shape using Drawing Inside mode.

As the shape is too sharp, you can add softness for a more realistic-looking shadow in four ways: Inner Glow, Blur, Texture and Gradients.

Inner Glow & Gradients

I apply a blending mode of Multiply to the shadow shapes. That way any white part disappears. I include an Inner Glow effect, which softens the edges and creates a more realistic looking shadow.

You can use light colours other than white to create different moods.

Blur

Believe it or not, but you can use a Gausisan blur in Illustrator, just like in Photoshop. A word of caution though: use the effect sparingly, as it slows down Illustrator immensely.

Inner Glow effects and gradients cause less computer load on your machine, and usually give the same look.

Texture

Adding texture also softens crisp shapes.

You just go to the Filter > Textures > Add grain and adjust as you'd like to create your own custom texture. 

Doing this creates white sprinkles inside the shape which will disappear once you add the Multiply blending mode.

Highlights

I add lights with the same technique I used for shadows, except that I usually set the blending mode to Lighten or sometimes Screen.

To add texture to highlights I have a little workaround: just add a texture to another shape, then copy-&-paste that into the Transparency panel, and create the same effect.

Blending modes

I mostly use Multiply for shadows and Lighten for highlights, but you can experiment with other modes. Using Colour or Hue on a gradient, applied to an object for example, pushes certain things to the background.

Screen creates interesting colours that I use for reflections on glass; I keep playing with that just to see what happens.

A tip: If work with a limited colour palette, playing with the blending mode is a great way to introduce new colours that already have the same DNA as your existing colour scheme.