How to Design a Vector Sea Turtle in Illustrator

You can design a sea turtle in Illustrator to help you create scenes taking place underwater, and to visually communicate the idea of this aquatic reptile. You will be able to enlarge the turtle you produce from this project to any size without loss of quality, in contrast to an image you can produce with a program such as Paint or Photoshop. Illustrator's vector graphics make this enlargement possible. Such graphics store images not as data, but as a series of instructions indicating how a program should render the image.

Instructions

1. Click the tool palette icon shaped like an oval to run the tool for drawing ovals. Drag on the canvas to create an oval whose height is approximately 1.5 times its width. This shape forms the top view of the sea turtle's shell.

2. Draw an oval approximately 1/16 the size of the shell oval, directly atop the shell. This shape represents the turtle's head.

3. Click the tool palette icon shaped like a paintbrush to enter painting mode, then drag on the upper right side of the shell oval to paint an upside-down "U" or crescent-like shape. Make this shape's length approximately the same size as the shell's width. The shape you just drew forms the turtle's right foot.

4. Click the black arrow icon from the tool palette to run the selection tool, then click the foot you just drew. Press "Control" and "C" simultaneously to copy the foot to the clipboard, then press "Control" and "V" simultaneously to paste a duplicate of the foot.

5. Click the "Object" menu's "Transform" sub-menu, then click the "Reflect" item, which creates a mirror image of an object. Click the "Vertical" option button to flip the duplicate foot so it becomes the left foot.

6. Run the selection tool as described in Step 4, then click and drag the left foot to join it with the upper left portion of the shell oval. Ensure the left foot is symmetrical with the right foot.

7. Use the instructions from Steps 1 through 6 to create the rear feet for the turtle. However, make these feet about half the size of the forefeet.

8. Click the tool palette icon shaped like a paint bucket with squares on its right to run the "Live paint bucket" tool, which lets you fill in shapes.

9. Click the leftmost dropdown list above the canvas to open the pattern selection gallery, then click the first icon at the bottom of the gallery to open the "Swatch libraries" list. Click the "Patterns" item, then click "Animal" to fill the gallery with textures from animal hides. Hover your mouse over the pattern swatches until the "Snake" label appears, then click that swatch.

10. Click the shell oval to fill it with the pattern you just selected, then use the instructions from Steps 8 and 9 to fill the remaining shapes in the turtle with a similar pattern.

References

• "Illustrator CS5 Bible"; Ted Alspach; 2010