IllustrationFriday topic this week was Instinct. Well, who has more instinct than our old friend the caveman? He hunts, he gathers, he invents things like the wheel and discovers fire.

I did this in Adobe Illustrator. If you are looking to learn Illustrator, I have a beginner’s series of tutorials.

IllustrationFriday has a weekly topic to illustrate for fun. This week’s topic was Celebrate. Since it is Valentine’s day, I went with celebrating Valentine’s day. I’m still working on my doodle style, so this one is similar to last week’s image.

I did this in Adobe Illustrator. If you are looking to learn Illustrator, I have a beginner’s series of tutorials.

IllustrationFriday has a weekly topic to illustrate for fun. This week’s topic was Time. I was going to draw a hammer and call it Hammer Time, but I was working on this doodle style with a school theme. So it is School Time instead. Sorry Hammer. Please don’t hurt me.

I’m not sure what I think of this style yet, so feel free to tell me how much it sucks below. As usual, I did this in Adobe Illustrator. I have a few Illustrator tutorials on this site, so feel free to check those out.

This is the seventh tutorial in the Illustrator Beginner’s series. We’ve already covered placing sketches, using the Pen tool, tracing sketches with the Pen tool, making symmetrical vector files, using the Ellipse tool and creating symmetrical curves. This lesson covers turning lines into shapes.

Here’s my sketch. You can either work on the same layer as your other shapes or create a new one to work on for the stem. If you want a refresher on using layers, you can refer to the first tutorial.

I start by drawing a curved line. If you need a refresher on the Pen tool, check it out here.

Next, I open my Stroke palette. Go to Window > Stroke.

The palette pops up. I click on the up arrow next to the stroke weight. This increases my stroke weight by one at a time. I do this until it looks about the right width as my sketch. I ended up with a 10 pt line.

Next, I want to turn my line into a shape. I’m going to use the Outline Stroke. Go to Object > Path > Outline Stroke. You can also use the Flatten Transparency.

Your line turns into a shape. It will now have a solid fill instead of a stroke. If you want to change the color back you can either change your colors the usual way or you can use the Eyedropper tool. To use the Eyedropper, select the stem, change to the Eyedropper tool and click on another object with it. I turned the layer with the eyes back to visible in my layer palette and clicked on the eyes with the Eyedropper. The Eyedropper changes the stem to the same color as the eyes. It also picks up the same stroke weight.

Here’s what my leaf stem shape looks like.

Next, I use the Direct Selection tool to adjust the shape. I pull out the bottom anchor points a little and the move the top ones in a little bit.

I want my stem to have a slight curve to the bottom, so I’m going to add an anchor point to the bottom. You can either add anchor points with the regular Pen tool or the Add Anchor point tool (located in the same spot as the Pen tool). To add an anchor point, select the stem shape. Then, switch to the Pen tool and click on the spot on the line where you want to add another point. I put one in between the bottom two points.

Next, I use the Direct Selection tool to move my new anchor point down.

Now, I want to make the new point curved. To do that, I’ll need to select the Convert Anchor Point tool.

Click and drag on the new anchor point with the Convert Anchor Point tool. Instead of moving the point, you’ll notice it creates handles and the line curves. Move it around until you get the desired curve. You can also go in and fine tune the shape with the Direct Selection tool.

Well, that’s it. You’ve finished tracing the sketch. I went back and turned on all the layers and turned off my sketch layer. I may or may not continue with this series, so hopefully, this helped prepare you for some of the other cartoon tutorials. Let me know if anything isn’t clear or you’d like further explanation of something.

This is the sixth tutorial in the Illustrator Beginner’s series. We’ve already covered placing sketches, using the Pen tool, tracing sketches with the Pen tool, making symmetrical vector files and using the Ellipse tool. This lesson covers creating symmetrical curves by making the smiling mouth.

Here’s my sketch. You can either work on the same layer as your other shapes or create a new one to work on for the mouth. If you want a refresher on using layers, you can refer to the first tutorial.

Start by drawing one half of the smile using the Pen tool. Start your first point at the corner of the mouth and make the second one near the middle of the mouth. Hold down the Shift key while making the line curve. If you need a refresher on the Pen tool, check it out here.

The reason for holding down the Shift key is it makes your curved line end pointing in a straight line or parallel to your page edge (instead of being angled up or down).

Next, draw the crescent shape for the cheek. Start by making the top curved line with the Pen tool, then click off of the line. Remember you can hold down the Command/Control key to quickly switch between the Pen and the Selection tools. Now, start drawing again by hovering your mouse over the last point you made. When you see the slash next to the tooltip, click on the point. Then complete the shape by hovering over the original point until you see the circle. Click on the point and pull out your curve.

Note: If you try to restart your curve on the first point you made, you’ll probably have trouble with trying to make the right shape (you end up with a distorted blob). If this happens to you, undo the last line (Command/Control Z) and start at the opposite point instead.

Now, select the two parts of the mouth to make a copy. To select multiple objects, Shift click on the second object or draw a box around all the objects you want to select with the Selection tool. Now that your objects are selected, hold down the Option and Shift keys while dragging the objects to the right. You’ll want to press the Shift key after you start dragging, otherwise you’ll deselect the shapes.

With your copied half mouth selected, double click on the Reflect tool.

A dialogue box pops up. Select Vertical and click OK.

Your mouth should have flipped. You may need to move it around to get it to line up with your sketch.

Now connect the two mouth halves with the Pen Tool.

Open up your Stroke palette. Go to Window > Stroke.

The Stroke palette pops up and I set my stroke to 2 pt. This will thicken up your line a little.

Now, let’s make your line into a closed shape. Select just the mouth and not the cheeks. Go to Object > Path > Outline Stroke. You’ll notice your stroked line is now a closed shape. I usually don’t do this step until the very end, so I can change the stroke weight if I want.

You can also outline your stroke by using the Flatten Transparency. Flatten Transparency will also convert dashed lines and brush effects which the Outline Stroke doesn’t do. Go to Object > Flatten Transparency to use it. Move the slider to 100% Vector.

Finally, select the cheeks and the smile and use the Add to shape area from the Pathfinder palette. Again, I probably wouldn’t do this step until the end. Just in case I wanted to change something, but I figured it was good to show for the tutorial.

Here’s my final mouth. I was originally going to do the stem in this tutorial too, but this one ran long. So, it will get done in the next one.

Here’s my sketch. You can either work on the same layer as the leaf shape or create a new one to work on for the eyes. If you want a refresher on using layers, you can refer to the first tutorial.

Alright, back to the Direct Select tool… I click on the line of the oval with the Direct Selection tool. The line lights up and I can see all the anchor points and handles. I start by clicking on the left middle anchor point and pulling it down a little. This makes my eyeball a little more bottom heavy and egg shaped. Next I grab the top left handle of the top anchor point and move it in or closer toward the anchor. If I hold down Shift while I’m moving it, it will only move in one direction. Then, I do the same with the right handle.

You can adjust the distance the point moves by changing your settings. Go to File > Preferences > General. A dialogue box pops up and the first box is keyboard increments.