How to Create an Aquarium in Illustrator

If you're just learning Illustrator you might think a lot of things that would be easy with a bitmap editor like Photoshop, wouldn't work as an Illustration. How could you make water for instance? Try making an aquarium in Illustrator to learn how many cool techniques are available.

Instructions

1. Draw a rectangle the size of the aquarium to create the aquarium front wall. Hold down the "Option" key and click in the center of the rectangle with the scale tool and set the scale options to: "Horizontal 95 percent," "Vertical 90 percent" and "Copy." Select both rectangles and click "Subtract from shape area" in the Pathfinder palette to knock a hole in the aquarium wall.

2. Color and style the wall. Open the Gradients Swatch library (use the "Open Swatch Library" command in the Swatches palette flyout menu) to apply the steel swatch. Apply a 1 point 50 percent gray stroke to create depth around the edges.

3. Duplicate the wall compound shape twice. Position the top shape (front wall) and the bottom shape (back wall) so they are offset at the depth you want the tank to be. Lock the front and back layers and use the shear and scale tools to bend the middle rectangle into the shape of the left walls. Drag into place and then hold down the "Option" key and drag a copy into position as the right wall.

4. Create a new sublayer underneath the front wall shape. Find a high resolution image of rocks or gravel and place it in the sublayer. Use the pen tool to create a path in the shape of the bottom of the tank and apply it as a clipping mask. The mask should now hide everything but the rocks inside the aquarium (you can always fine tune the path).

5. Use the pen tool to create a shape in the area of your water. Apply an aqua or light blue swatch for the fill color and no stroke. Set the layer blend mode to soft light. Move the water path just beneath the front wall.

6. Draw fish or use the fishes supplied in the Nature symbols library provided with Illustrator. Scale, rotate and warp the fish to make them appear more lifelike. Add bubbles, castles or sunken ships or any other objects you want to fill out your scene.