How to Do Line Art in Illustrator
Use Illustrator to create line art by drawing with any of the program's line-drawing tools, such as Line, Rectangle, or Ellipse. You can use the line drawings as the basis of digital paintings, which feature shapes filled with color and lacking in strong outlines. Or use the line drawings as the foundation for pencil-like sketches, whose shapes you can fill with hatching marks rather than color. Note that dragging the mouse isn't the only way to insert linear graphics on Illustrator's canvas. You can also click the canvas to enable keyboard input for creating these graphics.
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Instructions
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Click the leftmost drop-down list above the canvas to display the gallery of color swatches for filling shapes with color. Click the white swatch with a diagonal red line through it to indicate that you don't want a fill color. This action will enable you to draw lines only, with no color to fill any shapes you make with lines.
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Click the Tools panel icon that's shaped like a spiral to run the tool for drawing spirals, and then drag on the canvas to define a spiral. Click the Tools panel icon shaped like a straight line to run the line-drawing tool, and then use the mouse to draw a line as you drew the spiral. It's OK to overlap the spiral with the line.
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Click the rectangle, star or ellipse-shaped icon in the Tools panel, and then drag on the canvas to draw one of the shapes just described. You can overlap your existing graphic with the shape.
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Press and hold the "Alt" key, and then scroll the middle mouse wheel downward to zoom out. This action lets you see your complete graphic as though from a distance.
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Jot down on paper any images you recognize within the graphic. For example, you may write "Nose, eye, house."
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Click the Tools panel icon shaped like a paintbrush to enter painting mode, and then drag on the canvas to outline the image you recognized.
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Paint additional strokes to clarify or add detail to the image you outlined. For example, if you recognized the façade of a house, you might paint in window shutters and a chimney. Stop painting when you sense that you’ve fully developed the image you recognized and detailed.
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References
- Illustrator CS5 Bible; Ted Alspach
- Design Basics; David Lauer
