Introduction

Today we’re going to be doing a very simple yet very appealing mountain sunset tutorial. You can see the finished product pictured above. To create it you’ll need Adobe Illustrator 9, CS, CS2, or CS3, and of course to read this article. It shouldn’t take more then 15 minutes for almost anyone to finish. In fact, most people will find that this tutorial is so simple that you may even kick yourself afterward for not thinking of it, but save the self mutilation for later. We have a tutorial to do.

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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.

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Adobe Illustrator Ladybug Tutorial Part 1

Adobe Illustrator Ladybug Tutorial Part 2

Like I promised this is the third, and final, part to our ladybug tutorial. If you want to read up on how to make your own ladybug you can get to the first two parts of the tutorial above. As with my tutorials before, I want to give some usage examples for the subject of our tutorial. Those wonderful lipid munching ladybugs. Here we go.

My first example uses the ladybug directly as you see it in the tutorial. This is a simple example tri-fold flier from an imaginary flower shop. I made this flier using the my Floral, Vine, Flower, and of course Ladybug tutorials for a combined effect. I like these fliers because their simple, cost effective, and straight to the point. This by the way was not done in Indesign. Illustrator can do just as good a job making fliers like these if you use your head a little when your setting up your drawing.

My next example is the illustrated ladybug. This takes our drawing, removes the gradients, and applies a simple charcoal stroke. Simple, but the effect is something your likely to see in a lot of children’s books. I’ll give you a hint; this is how a lot of children books are illustrated. Bright colors, solid fills, and the warm feeling of hand drawn sketches will probably remain in children’s books for a very long time to come.

Now what if you want to have a more antique china feel. Take your ladybug from the tutorial. First make a copy of your ladybug, then apply a gaussam blur to the original, and set the stoke to transparent. Now paste your copy over the original, and remove it’s fill. Instant china plate lady bug.

Well we now have antique bugs, and old china bugs, what about modern robotic bugs? Change some colors around, apply a stroke and curl to your antennas, and your ready to go. Robo ladybug all ready for your metallic theme.

Well that’s all my examples for this portion of the tutorial, but this barely touches the ideas I had. I hope you enjoyed the tutorial, and thanks for reading.

I started working on the next tutorial a few days ago, and after all the flowers, vines, and bugs. I really wanted to give you a good advanced tutorial. The only problem is that I didn’t really consider the time involved in writing such a tutorial. Sure, I could draw a couple of cars in a day, if not more, but to write a tutorial on how to make one? Well lets just say that even at this level, it could take a very long time. The parts and proportions are just a little to hard to walk someone through on paper unless you’ve done them before.

So, will this be my next tutorial? No. I might finish the drawing, and post it later, but I’m trashing this tutorial and starting from scratch. I think I’m going to use a different body style. I’ll have to play around with a few before I find what I’m looking for, but expect something on the same lines as a intermediate to advanced tutorial in the near future. Just expect it to take 12 or 15 parts to complete. The end result should be well worth it.

Before that though. I’ll have the ladybug tutorial finished up tomorrow, and another tutorial I’ve started on right behind it. Since the car tutorial will take some time, I’m going to split up working on it with a bunch of smaller tutorials like the ones I’ve done before. I might realease parts of it between other tutorials, or I might hold out until it’s finished. I have not decided yet. I just wanted everyone to know it’s comming.

Read Part 1 of This Tutorial Here

This is the second part of our ladybug tutorial. We have already laid out the ladybug’s body in the first part of this tutorial. We will be using that as our foundation for our second part. We still have a lot of work to do so, take your time as you walk through this part. I’ll try to explain it as clearly as I can, hopefully, without losing you. If you missed the first tutorial, you can click the link above to read it.

Part 2 - Finishing Out Our Ladybug

Open up the ladybug body we completed in the first tutorial. It should look something like the picture you see here. To finish our ladybug out we need to give it some eyes, antenna, and legs. It might not sound like much, but this is going to be the larger portion of this tutorial. So lets get to work.

The Eyes …

The first thing I want to add is the eyes, so set your fill color to white and stroke to black. Select the Ellipse Tool from the Tool Pallet, and draw a small ellipse like the one you see here. Now use your Selection Tool from the Tool Pallet to drag the ellipse over the head to make the white part of the eye. Resize it using the grips if you need to make it smaller, or change it’s shape.

Once you have the eye the right size and shape you want, select it and make a copy by using CTRL + C. Now paste the new copy of the eye over the other using CTRL + F. While holding down the Shift key, drag the new eye to the other side of the head. Holding the Shift key will allow you to drag the eye without changing it’s relative vertical position to the other eye. This will keep them perfectly even vertically. For this tutorial we won’t worry about exact mirroring horizontally.

Now it’s time we make the pupils. Set your fill to black, and select the Ellipse Tool again from the Tool Pallet. Draw a small black circle on the screen by holding down the Shift key while drawing will make the circle perfectly round. Drag the new circle over the eyes we just placed. Make a copy of the pupil just like you did with the eye. Paste the new pupil over the old one with CTRL + F, and use the Shift key once again while dragging the pupil to the opposite eye. When your finished your picture should now look more like this one.

On to The Shell

As you can tell from the picture above I got a little ahead of myself while I was taking screen shots. So lets get caught up. Select your Line Tool from the Tool Pallet. We want to draw a single line from the bottom center of the red shell, to the top center. Select the top most quadrant of the shell and drag down until you reach the bottom most quadrant. Once again to can use the Shift key to draw a perfectly straight line spitting the shell into two equal parts. Once you finish well move onto the spots.

The spots are relatively easy. All we need to do is make some copies of our pupil like before and paste them, however we like, on the shell. Pick your Selection Tool, and select one of the pupils we drew before. Once you have selected your pupil, copy it by using CTRL+ C. Since we don’t need to place our spots in any particular place, just use CTRL + P to paste the spots on the screen. Position the spots on one side of the shell in the desired locations. Why on one side you ask. Well we are going to cheat my mirroring our spots by using the Reflect command.

Once you have your spots where you want them, hold down the shift key while using the Selection Tool to select all of the dots. Now right click on the screen and select Transform -> Reflect. You should now see a highlighted mirror image of the spots you first selected. Now hold down the Shift key again, and drag your spots onto the opposite side of the shell using the Selection Tool.

The Antenna …

Now that our ladybug is starting to look more like a bug then a red blob, it’s time to add our antenna. Select the Arc Tool. From the Tool Pallet and drag an arc somewhere on the open space of the screen. Anywhere is fine, since we are going to use it not only for our antenna, but also our legs later. Select the Selection Tool on the Tool Pallet, and select your new arc. Make a copy of your arc using CTRL+ C and paste a new copy on the screen using CTRL+ P. Using the grips rotate and scale your arc until it looks something like an antenna, and drag it over the head. Now use CTRL + C again to make a copy of your new antenna, then CTRL + F to paste a new one over it. Right click on the screen and select Transform -> Reflect to make a mirror image of it. Finally drag the new reflected Antenna to the opposite side of the head.

Once you have finished your antenna, it’s time to add the little balls at the end. This is of course a matter of preference. If you don’t like balls at the end of your antenna, you can skip this step. To add them, select one of your pupils or spots using the Selection Tool, and make a copy using CTRL + C Paste two new black circles on the the screen using CTRL + V. Now drag the two new copies over the ends of the antenna. That’s all nothing more to see here.

Finally, The Legs …

Here is where leaving our original arc on the screens going to pay off. Select the original arc you drew on the screen, and make two more copies of it. You should remember how by now. If it looks like my original above, you won’t even have to make any changes to them. Drag the three arcs to one side of the body spacing them equal distance apart vertically. You may want the front legs to stick out further then the rear ones. Don’t worry if they cover your image. You just don’t want your legs to stick out the other side.

Now for the other side. Using the Selection Tool drag over all three of the newly positioned legs so that all three are selected. Now you want to use the Transform -> Reflect command to mirror those legs like we did the spots. Drag the mirrored legs to the opposite side of the body while holding the Shift key.

Now that our legs are in position, we need to hide the excess under the body. Select all six legs using the Selection Tool, and right click on the screen. Use the command Arrange -> Send to Back to send the legs to the bottom of the drawing order. Thus hiding them under the body so that we only see what is sticking out. It’s just that simple.

Depending on your drawing size you may want to change the stroke of your legs. Use the Stroke window to play around with different leg widths, and caps, till you find what style your looking for if your not happy with the basic legs. I’m just going to go with the default cap here, and increase the “Weight” to 3pt instead of the default 1pt.

A Little Style …

That’s it for the drawing portion of this tutorial. However, you could go one step further to really make your ladybug stand out. Use your Selection Tool and select the ladybugs shell, then go to the Gradient window. Under “Type” select “Radial”. Your shell will now become a radial gradient. I filled my shell with a mid to deep red as shown here. Use the Gradient Tool from the Tool Pallet to adjust the intensity, and amount of gradient you want. I won’t go into using the Gradient Tool here, because simply, I could write a whole tutorial on just using it. Play around with it, and you will understand it’s usage very quickly though. Here is my finished product:

Wow! … Finally finished! A lot of work for such a little critter hugh? Since this installment is quite long, I’ll bring you some usage examples in a third, and final, installment. So, until next time. Thanks for reading.

Go to Part 3 of This Tutorial