Hi there, welcome to this video.
We are going to draw this lovely fox using just basic shapes.
Lines, rectangles, and stars, just really simple stuff.
We're going to start with a Template to draw over the top...
and end up with this.
Let's go and look at that now.
In this tutorial we're going to draw from this drawing that I've made.
Just to make it simple, so we can all follow along.
What I'd like to do is, in Illustrator...
we're going to go to 'File', 'New'.
Pick a document size, I'm going to start with 'Print'.
I'm going to use 'US Letter', I'm going to use 'Landscape'.
I'm not going to change anything else, just going to click 'Create'.
I'm going to save it, so I'm going to go to 'File', 'Save'.
What we'll do for this class, is I'll put everything on my Desktop, you do the same.
I'm going to make a new folder on my Desktop.
I'm going to call this one 'Illustrator Class Files', and that's all.
We're going to stick everything from this class.
Let's call this one 'Sleeping Fox'.
Let's click 'Save'.
Let's leave everything as the default, and click 'OK'.
So we're drawing from a drawing, I've drawn it in my notebook, right?
And I want to kind of just redraw it in Illustrator.
So nice trick to do that is...
I've done a scan of it, or we can take a photo of it.
I'm going to go to 'File', 'Place'.
Now, Place is Import, for Illustrator.
Illustrator likes to call it 'Place', click on that.
I want you to find your 'Exercise Files'...
and there's one in there called 'Sleeping Fox.jpg'.
Now before you click Place, click on this one that says 'Template'.
What it does for is, let's have a look, let's hit 'Place'.
What it does for us, is it brings it in -
I'm going to click in the background here...
and it puts it on a Layer...
and locks it so we can draw over the top of it easily.
Where I clicked on my 'Layers Panel' here, you see, it created a Template Layer...
and then a Layer that I can draw on.
We don't have to do this, just makes it easy when we're redrawing.
For some reason it likes to bring in...
and kind of has it a little bit over here, to the left side.
I'm going to unlock it, can you see...
that's the locking icon, I'm going to click on it.
Drag it across to a little bit more in the middle.
Something like that, then it will lock it again.
And to continue drawing, I want to make sure I'm on Layer 1.
Let's jump back to 'Properties'.
Now we'll start with this Body here...
we're going to grab the 'Rectangle Tool', here, he is here.
I'm going to click, hold, and drag out kind of a rough rectangle.
You don't get it quite right, jump back to the 'Black Arrow'...
and use any of these white boxes here...
just to kind of resize it, and get it close to that size there.
It's a bit of a guess, don't worry too much.
What I'm going to do is pick a Fill color, and a Stroke color.
Now yours may be different...
yours might have a black line around the outside, and a white Fill.
Let's look at changing those.
So over here, in my Appearance Panel...
there's one called Fill, and one called Stroke.
I'm going to click on 'Fill', and I'm going to pick a fox kind of color.
Now we're going to use these Swatches here, so you've got two options here.
Kind of the rainbow colors, and those Swatches.
Let's just pick, just for this class let's keep it simple...
and just pick something in here.
You can have a green fox, that's okay, I'm just going to have an orange fox.
And in terms of the Stroke...
the Stroke is the one around the outside, yours might already be black.
You might see-- I'll click off over here.
You can see, there's a black line...
if I select on this, and click on 'Stroke Color'...
now I want to use this red line here.
This little red line indicates No Stroke, that little red, crossed out.
Nothing there, but that's what I want.
If nothing is changing...
what you need to do, with your Black Arrow...
just make sure this box is selected, then make your changes.
So that's a rectangle, exciting, and that's its Fill color.
Let's get into something a little more exciting...
see these little dots in the corner here?
These are your corner options.
Watch this, I can click, and drag these corners...
the little spots there.
And you can notice that all of the corners come and change.
It's kind of what I want. I'm going to go to 'Edit', 'Undo'.
I'm going to use my shortcut for the rest of this course...
so it's 'Command Z' on a Mac, or 'Control Z' on a PC.
I want to undo a couple of times until it's back.
Now what I would like to do is...
you can see, underneath here, the drawing...
I've just got a corner there, and a corner there.
So, what I'd like to do is use my White Arrow.
Remember, the Black Arrow is basically doing, kind of big things...
moving the whole object.
The White Arrow is good for doing little bits within that object.
Now what I'm going to do is...
in this top right hand corner, I'm going to click it once.
You'll notice that this guy is blue, and these guys are white...
indicating that these guys are selected.
And you can see here, just one little target appears.
I can click on this guy now, and go something like that.
Same with the bottom left, click on that one, drag it up.
Don't worry too much about being perfect...
but if you are, if you really do want it to be perfect, what you can do -
I'm going to undo a couple of times.
- is you can have these guys selected at the same time.
So, click this guy once, hold 'Shift'...
click this guy once, and you've got two dots.
Then you drag one, and they both update.
So that's my little thing for his body, let's look at doing the head now.
So I'm going to go back to my Black Arrow,...
remember, that's the kind of default tool to go to.
Click off in the background, I've got nothing selected.
The next tool I want is the Polygon Tool...
because I want a Triangle for his head, and that's considered a Polygon in here.
So I'm going to find the 'Rectangle Tool', click, hold, hold, with your mouse key.
Hold it down, and eventually these pop up.
We're looking for this one called Polygon, click on that.
Now if I just do nothing, it will drag out whatever I last drew.
Yours is probably going to draw an actual Pentagon, or a Hexagon...
it's going to draw something.
I'm going to undo to get rid of that.
If you want to adjust how many sides this Polygon has...
all you need to do is just click once with your mouse.
Click once, and you get these Polygon options.
Yours is probably set to 5...
and you're probably getting something like that.
I'm going to undo again, click once, pick '3' sides.
Don't worry too much about the radius, we can change that afterwards.
I've got a Triangle.
Next thing I want to do is do some Rotation and Scaling.
It's best to do that when we're back on our safety tool, the Black Arrow.
I'm going to click, hold, and drag the center...
so it's kind of in a more usable place.
Now to Scale and Rotate...
let's look at rotating first.
So Black Arrow, have this guy selected just once.
Now what you'll notice is...
when I'm in the corner, I get this stretching arrow, that's my scale...
but if I come just a bit further out, I get this double arrow.
So there's kind of no man's land here, too far, doesn't work.
Just in, okay, never used to it.
So if I click and hold here, I can drag it around, clicking and holding.
What I can also do is, undo.
I want it to be kind of like... I want to flip it in, like...
Is it 90Â°, I guess, 90Â°.
I want to-- while I'm dragging, watch this.
If I hit down, and hold down the 'Shift' key on my keyboard...
watch this, can you see?
It drags in like nice big chunks, it's 45Â°...
then, 90Â°, that's what I want.
Now in terms of Scaling, same tool, Black Arrow...
and if I grab the corner here, and just drag it...
I can resize it any sort of shape I want...
by clicking, holding, and dragging.
Now I would like to kind of constrain it proportionately...
so that it's a perfect triangle...
because if I scale it down here, it gets a bit long and thin.
So what I'm going to do is hold down the 'Shift' key...
like I did when I was rotating...
if I hold 'Shift' while I'm Scaling, in any of those corners...
you can see, if I drag it down...
it kind of wants to be the same height and width, it kind of locks that ratio.
So I'm going to drag it, kind of in there.
Drag it up a little bit, something like that.
So, getting close.
Now the only trouble with what I've got here...
is I can't really see through it...
it's somewhat the other parts that I'm drawing.
So what might be nice now, is just while I'm working...
I'm going to switch down the Stroke...
and I'm going to make it a 'black' Stroke...
and the Fill, I'm going to change to 'None'.
So the Fill, with the red line, and the Stroke with black...
now I can see through it.
Like we did with the shape down here, we can play with the corner options.
So I've got this selected with my Black Arrow...
you'll notice that I can't click in the center anymore.
I could in this, because it selects the whole thing...
but in the middle of this, I can't. It doesn't.
You got to select the edge now, because it has no Fill.
And like before, I can grab this target here, and it does all the corners.
That's not what I want, so I'm going to undo.
I'm going to grab my 'White Arrow', and click on just this guy here.
Then I'm going to drag him upto roughly the same size that I want.
Awesome! Triangles and Rectangles. Let's do the nose now.
So I'm going to grab my Polygon Tool...
click once, '3' sides, click 'OK', way too big.
Grab my 'Black Arrow', holding 'Shift', I'm going to scale it down.
Then just in this no man's land, I'm going to try and rotate it around.
Now I'm going to drag it down...
let me get it roughly the right size there.
Now what I can do while I'm dragging this thing around...
often you just drag this little dot in the center...
it moves it around...
and I kind of want to get it perfect in there...
so there's a couple of things we need to do when we're working.
You'll notice that, by default, this thing...
you see these little marks that appears? You can see, it says, intersect.
Draws a line up with things all over here.
So a couple of things you need to do.
Make sure our Smart Guides are on, because they're really helpful.
So go to 'View', come down here, and make sure Smart Guides are ticked 'on'.
Next thing to do is, just to zoom in.
When we're working this far out, on things this delicate...
it's just really hard, it snaps at everything.
So remember, 'Command +', or 'Control +' on a PC...
gets us in nice and close.
And watch this, if I have my Black Arrow, and just click off in the background...
I don't have it selected, I have nothing selected.
If I click in, you can see, I can move my cursor around, it says, Anchor.
Anchor is considered like a corner point.
So if I click on, and drag this Anchor...
and I drag it close to here, you'll see, eventually it will snap in there.
It just kind of wants to line up, and intersect.
So you can find that's a nice, easy way.
It's just got to be zoomed in a little closer.
Then, kind of just drag in the corner... and try line it up where you want it to go.
And if Smart Guides are on, it's really good...
it's kind of snapping in there.
Next thing I want to do, is I want this to have a Fill of black...
and I want to have no line around the outside.
We got a red line.
Next tool we're going to use is-- I want to put in these whiskers.
I'm going to select on this guy.
Even though I've just put the color in...
I'm going to move it back to having 'No' Fill.
I'm going to give it a Stroke around the outside, so I can see it.
Now let's do the whiskers.
I'm just going to use the 'Line Segment Tool'.
It's a nice, simple tool.
Click, hold, drag.
Click, hold, drag, click, hold, drag.
Just so I've got three lines.
One thing you might find...
is if you try and draw something kind of straight out of...
you can see, if I draw something...
then I draw another one to come out that little point there...
it actually starts moving it.
If you do want to kind of get them to come out of the same point...
once you've drawn one, grab the 'Black Arrow'...
click in the background...
and go back to the 'Line Tool', then you'd be able to kind of start again.
'Black Arrow', click in the background, that's the Line Tool, start again.
I've kind of kept mine separate down here, just to avoid that.
Next thing I want to do is this little closed eye.
Now, we could, if we hold down the 'Polygon Tool'...
find the 'Ellipse Tool'.
I could draw like an open eye.
But my guy is sleeping, so I'm going to delete him.
And underneath the Line Segment Tool is an Arc Tool.
So click on him, and what I'm going to draw is just something...
it's a bit random, the way it draws. I want it to be kind of this way...
but let's just click it down, and kind of get something archy...
then we'll rotate it.
So I've got something like that, grab my 'Black Arrow'.
Remember, just hovering out here...
I can drag it around, move it down, scale it up.
Just kind of work with it until you find something that you like.
And in terms of the Stroke, say width, it's a bit thin for me.
I'm going to increase it up, probably the same for all of these guys...
they're all a bit thin for me at the moment.
I can do them individually, and over here, with it selected...
this is the Stroke Width, how thick the line is...
you can see him get really big.
I'm going to go out to something like '5 points'.
I don't want to have to do this individually.
So I'm going to click on this guy...
with my Black Arrow, hold 'Shift', grab him, grab him...
So I've got all three of them selected, and I'd like them all to be '5'.
Big.
So now I can go through and add my colors again...
I'm going to zoom out a little bit.
So this border here, we can have no Stroke.
So I'm going to go back to that crossed out red line...
and the Fill here, I'm going to pick my color.
It's going to be, I think it was this one.
And the head, I'm going to do the same sort of thing.
I'm going to have no Stroke.
And I'm going to pick a Fill color of that orange.
That's the kind of basics to get started. Let's look at a couple of things.
Let's look at this ear here.
So what I'd like to do is, I'm going to grab my 'Polygon Tool' again.
And because it remembers what I drew last time, I can just draw something out...
rather than clicking once, and making sure it's got three sides.
I know it does now.
So I can click and drag out.
Now while I'm dragging out...
I can hold 'Shift' to get it to go perfect...
that's kind of what I want.
So something like that.
It just needs to be big enough, because what I'm going to do is...
with the Black Arrow, grab the center, I'm going to turn it into this ear.
So probably needs to be a bit bigger.
Just so it kind of sits back there a little bit.
So what I'd like to do for this one...
is I'd like to have a really thick Stroke, and a Fill of white.
So, the Fill, I'm going to change it to 'white'...
and I'm going to have the Stroke...
and I'm going to pick, maybe just a darker color of that.
I'm going to increase it to match the Stroke size.
I was using 5 over here for these guys, I might as well use 5 for the ear.
I'm just going to pop it there.
Now this brings me to the next point of arranging.
Basically the last thing you draw is on top.
All I need to do is move it to the back.
And there's a couple of ways, with it selected, with the Black Arrow...
over here there's one called 'Arrange'...
and I can go 'Send to Back', and it goes over there.
Or often, what I do is I just right click it...
and there's 'Arrange', 'Send to Back'.
Either way, it doesn't matter.
Let's look at doing these stars.
There is an actual tool for it called the Star Tool, grab on him.
Click once, decide how many points you want.
By default it's going to give you a pretty nice looking star.
You can change the two radii, the inner...
which is the outside part...
and then the inner radius, radius 2, is this inside part.
I'm going to click 'OK', it gives me a star, I can click and drag it out.
So what I'd like you to do is-- I'm going to undo...
and just drag out a star, stuff in the center.
Here we go.
Roughly, don't worry too much about it.
You can have more stars, you can have less stars.
Something like that, badly drawn stars, little stars.
Add more, go nuts.
We're going to add a bit more detail, this tail...
and we'll add, kind of the grass down the bottom.
Basically we've covered the tools that we're going to be using...
so you can skip it here.
There's a couple of little things that we'll do in here.
Let's do this tail first.
So I might grab my 'Rectangle Tool'.
Can't find him, there he is.
Draw something roughly close to it.
You'll notice, the Smart Guides here has locked into the bottom, super helpful.
You can turn them off though, under 'View', 'Smart Guides'...
if you're finding them troublesome.
There's a shortcut, it's really, often...
to turn it on and off while you're building.
So they've given it a really good shortcut.
In this case, on a Mac, it's 'Command U' on a Mac...
or 'Control U' on a PC.
So first thing I want to do is...
I'm going to give it No Fill, so I can see through it.
And I'm going to grab my 'White Arrow', click on just this corner.
Actually I'm going to click on that one, hold 'Shift', grab that one.
Let's draw something matching this.
Same thing again, I'm going to draw a Rectangle over this guy.
I'm going to grab my 'White Arrow'.
Click on this one, hold 'Shift', grab this guy.
Add that corner point.
And we're doing some stuff.
And what I want to do is, I'm going to pick a Fill color...
so at the moment, the Stroke is orange, I'd like to have the Stroke as 'None'.
Fill color is the 'Orange'.
And I'm going to have this Fill color, so Stroke of 'None'...
and a Fill color of 'White'.
Exciting!
He was lying down.
I feel like, now that I've drawn it, I want to grab this guy.
So I selected both of them, clicked on this...
hold 'Shift', grab this guy...
and I'm going to rotate it around.
Holding 'Shift' while you're rotating, remember, like the Head...
locks it into kind of 45.
Looked like he's sleeping there.
You decide.
Yes, he looks like he's sleeping there.
Next thing I'd like to do is, underneath here is some grass...
so all I'm going to do is--
actually I was just going to move that other way for the moment.
Grab the 'Polygon Tool', which is still set to Triangle.
Draw something, like a triangle.
Then grab the 'Black Arrow'.
And just kind of shrink it in there, and we're just going to build this.
I'm going to zoom in a little bit.
Copy, and paste it...
so with it selected, I've gone 'Edit', 'Copy', 'Edit', 'Paste'.
I'm just going to use my shortcuts to speed it up.
And I'm going to draw, resize it.
This is where you can just build your own grass.
Little bit high, grab that dot in the middle to make sure you move it.
Now I'm just doodling.
There is one other thing, so hang around, I'll show you in a sec.
Copy, paste, move it around.
I'm not too worried about these being kind of down here...
because I'm going to show you a technique to kind of trim them up.
So I'm going to select all these, copy and paste it, make another version.
And with them all selected, I can scale them all in one go.
So it's going to look something like that.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to select them all...
and I'm going to grab you...
and I'm going to grab a Fill of this kind of dark gray color.
I'll show you what I'm going to do in a second...
you saw it at the beginning, right?
So, move him back in.
Nice!
We've used my drawing now, it's kind of done its dash.
We've got our kind of Fill drawing now, I want to go into my Layers panel.
Let's just turn the visibility of that off.
So this eyeball layer here, if you click on that...
you'll notice that it disappears.
You can leave it there, doesn't really matter...
but I'm just turning it off so I can't see it.
Kind of brings me to my next point. I need to resize this.
My next point is, when you're scaling things...
look what happens by default.
So if I select everything, so 'Black Arrow'...
drag a box around all of it.
Under 'Properties', there's an important thing here.
Actually no, before you select anything...
there's this one here, 'Scale Stroke & Effects'.
So there's going to be times when you need this on...
and some times when you need it off.
If it's off, look what happens.
If I select this, and I scale it down, say I just need a smaller version of him...
so I've selected it all.
I'm going to scale it down...
and like we did when we were drawing lots of shapes...
if we hold down 'Shift' while we're scaling it...
it locks the height and width...
otherwise it gets all kind of stretchy.
So shift down, and look what happens when I get down quite small.
It's remembered that this is 5 points.
And it just does some weird stuff when it gets down to here.
It's trying to kind of remember...
the actual radii that we used around here.
It's doing some strange things.
So sometimes you want that...
you want to scale it down a bit, and retain the Stroke Width...
but I'm going to go to 'Edit', 'Undo'.
And with nothing selected, I'm going to turn that on...
and it's going to scale those?? now...
proportionately to the size that I've got.
Now when I scale it down...
I hold down 'Shift', and then scale it down...
you can see, these guys, these stars here...
they come down, and they're smaller size, they're like 3 points now.
So that's just kind of something...
you need to be aware of when you're scaling things.
It's that sometimes you want them to scale appropriately...
and sometimes you want them to actually get smaller...
so you'll turn that on and off.
Last little thing, I'm just going to...
I don't know, maybe just look a little nicer with some rectangles.
I'm going to use--
I'll draw a rectangle, it covers kind of the bottom here.
It's just going to match the same color as my grass.
Actually I might use the Black Arrow... and get it to snap to the bottom of my fox.
I'll use the same color as that, so 'Fill', and, which one is it?
Lucky first guess.
Same with the sky here.
I'm going to grab the 'Rectangle Tool', space bar, drag up a little bit.
And let's have a nice starry sky.
Snaps in. Fill color, I'm going to use another one of the darker grays.
That dark.
With it selected, 'Arrange', 'Send to Back'.
And I might make the stars just white.
Even though we've spent ages talking about the Strokes of these guys...
goodbye Stroke.
And a Fill might be up to... I don't know what I'm doing
So that is my, or our fox drawn out of just really basic shapes.
There's so much you can do just with those shapes.
Now, like I said at the beginning, often it's a combination of--
I've kind of kept this design to a specific shape...
just to kind of like, I guess, work through some of the tools...
but often you'll find you'll be using things like...
the Shape Builder Tool and the Pen Tool, which we'll do in the next tutorial.
Also in that process...
like, you saw how we kind of started with the drawing first.
I do that really often, right?
I kind of draw in my notebook...
because I find that it's just easier and quicker.
Often I don't even do a scan...
to redraw in Illustrator, I just get a general sense of it in my notebook.
Now my drawing here looked really good, right?
It's perfect, it kind of follows the lines.
It's never that good. I'll show you--
I'll cut to this shot here, jump across.
So here it is, I just took a photo of my notebook.
That is the glorious fox.
So just kind of draw a little bit, and kind of got it close.
I wouldn't scan and redraw, I would just use it as kind of a visual.
Then just start drawing in Illustrator...
kind of perfected it, I guess, to get a nicer shape.
But that's kind of more of a truer sense of my process.
I will just do a really kind of a basic drawing...
and then draw straight into Illustrator.
So that's the end of how to draw basic shapes.
What I'd like to do now is challenge you to a challenge.
It's to take kind of the same techniques...
so you're allowed to use rectangles, stars, lines, those type of things...
and create your own animal.
It could be sleeping like mine, it doesn't have to be.
Just something simple, pick some different colors.
It can still be a mammal.
So you can use the whiskers, it can still be sleeping.
You can use stars, but just pick a different animal...
dog, cat, some sort of animal.
I'd love to see it as part of your project.
Give it a go, I'd love to see what you have done.
So when you've done it...
doesn't matter how good it is, or how bad it is...
please post it as a project, I'd love to see it.
All right, let's get on to the next video.