Today we’re going to learn how to draw a simple cherry using Adobe Illustrator 9, CS, CS2, or CS3. This is a simple tutorial that anyone can do in around 30 minutes. Once again, in trying to minimize load, I’m trying something a little different. In this tutorial I won’t be adding the tool pics like I’ve done in the past. The commands are highlighted to help you find them, but I will not provide screen shots for the buttons and menus any longer. They make the tutorial too long to read or write.

Before we start you may be asking yourself why cherries? Well, I’ll have to admit that I was eating them when I was thinking about my next tutorial, but that’s not the only reason. Cherries are a wonderful fruit that are not only loved by a great many people, but are also used regularly in foods, logos, and even in items dealing with love. Their very popular, and if you design, you’ll probably need to be able to make one some day. So, I hope you like this tutorial as much as I liked eating them Let’s get started.

First start up Adobe Illustrator, and start a new drawing. Any size is fine as usual. So that it looks like we’re achieving something right off the bat, we’re going to start off with making a gradient.

Go to your Gradient Window and select Radial Gradient. Now the first color in our radial gradient will be a pink, and the second color of our gradient should be a deep red. Set the stroke to a burgundy. Some people may prefer using a white as our lighter color, and some may prefer using a light red. Since we’re not worried about lights for this tutorial use your imagination. I’ve seen some nice purple and orange colored cherries before that really look great. I should note that I’m using a different method of making my images for this tutorial that will make my construction drawings a little lighter then the finished drawings.

Now that we have our color, let’s talk cherry. For our body we’re going to use the standard Ellipse Tool from the Tool Pallet. Draw an ellipse on the screen while holding down the shift key to make it a perfect circle. Don’t worry about the fill for now. We’ll use the gradient tool later to fix it.

Since Cherry’s are not perfectly round we’ll have to make a few subtle changes. First use the selection tool from the tool pallet to select our cherry. Now select the Delete Anchor Point Tool from the Tool Pallet and remove the top most anchor point from our circle. Now we have a kind of squat cherry to work with, but it’s just a little too squat. Choose the Direct Selection Tool from the Tool Pallet. Grab the top arc on our cherry and drag it while using the shift key until the shape looks right to you. Alternatively you could also use the Selection Tool and drag the shape to make it appear longer as well.

Now that we have the basic body shape, lets talk stems. The cherry stem is rather simple to draw. Select the Arc Tool from the Tool Pallet and draw an arc on the screen about the size you want to make your cherry stem. As a hint, most cherry stems are about 1 1/2 the height of the main body. Once you have your first arc finished draw a second arc right next to the first. Remember that cherry stems are larger at the top then the bottom. Other wise we could have just offsetted a copy of the first.

Remember how to join lines? Use your Direct Selection Tool to select the top most ends of your stem arcs. Go to Object->Path->Join in the File menu to joint the ends together. Remember that you can’t have any other points selected for this to work. Once you have the top of the arcs joined, join the bottom.

Now we’re going to finish off our stem with a new gradient. Select the newly created stem with the Selection Tool. Go to your Gradient Window , and set one side of the gradient to green, and the other to a dark green. Leave the gradient as radial. It will make our stem seem like it’s curling away then back towards us. Set your stroke to an even darker green. Note: Ripe cherry stems really have very little green in them, we just draw them that way for contrast.

Now for a little clean up. The first thing we’re going to do is fix the gradient on our cherry. First pick the cherry body with the Selection Tool from the Tool Pallet. Next select the Gradient Tool from the Tool Pallet, and select where you want your light source to strike the cherries body and drag to where you want the reflection to stop. There is no way for me to directly explain the Gradient Tool ’s function. The best explanation is in practice. Appearance is also by preference. So it’s best to leave it to the artist.

Next we’re going to add a small recess where the cherry stem connects to the body. Select your Ellipse Tool from the Tool Pallet, and draw an ellipse that nearly touches the top of the body. Size is a preference as usual, but I found the best seems to be around 1/5 the height of the body, and about 1/3 the width. Now right click on the ellipse and select Arange->Send Backward to put it behind our stem. Now select the Gradient Window . Leave the darker color we used for the cherries body, and use a very deep red instead of the pink. Finally select your Gradient Tool once more, and pick the top of our new ellipse, and drag down until you’ve almost reached it’s bottom. I’m may take a few attempts before you get it right.

Finally we need to make a little addition to our stem. When zoomed to extents you’ll notice that the bottom of our stem looks very blocky, so we need to round it out a little. Zoom in to the bottom of your cherry stem. Select your Ellipse Tool from the Tool Pallet. Draw an ellipse the same size as the end of your stem, and half as tall. Go to the Pathfinder Window and select Merge . This will join the stem and your new ellipse together. You may have to make some color adjustments to your stem when finished.

Great! Now we’re all finished. Zoom back out and your cherry should now look something like the one at the beginning of this tutorial. Pretty simple in all, but it may take a little practice to get the shapes and colors just the way you want them. Be experimental. That’s the best way not only to find what works best for you. Now lets look at a few usage examples.

Cherries are typically drawn in pairs. You’ll find them on menus, signs, and cards quite often if you look for them. So, Guess what my first example will be? Yep. A pair of cherries.

For my next example I’m going to take our single cherry, apply a blur, then overlay the strokes back onto the original for that porcelain feel. This has a nice warm feel, but notice that I didn’t quite finish it. I only went as far as to use the original drawing from our tutorial.

I’ve been wanting to add a little more design oriented examples to my tutorials. I did this by making a pamphlet in my ladybug tutorial. This time I’m going to make a cherry logo. This could easily be used for shipping crates, signs, or even a company logo.

Well we’ve completed our cherry, and even made some examples from our drawing, so we’re done for today. Don’t forget to check our my other tutorials. Thanks.