Vectordiary » Sonali Vora

30 Cute And Inspiring Animal Illustrations

Sonali Vora — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:42:24 +0000

In this roundup, we present a collection of 30 cute and inspiring animal illustrations. The roundup provides some fantastic vector animal characters from across the web and includes everything from giraffe, bunnies, elephant, zebra to fish… Well, just read on to check out the collection. It will not only inspire you but some of the pieces will bring a smile on your face!

Tekenclub

Pick Me

Sea Turtle

Happiness

Egg

Harem

The Giraffe and the Fennec

For book. Bespalov.10

Fuck Your Sneakers Crew

Bring Peace to Midnight

Pincher…

Kindness

Elephant

Loving snails – The return

Capybara Pet

Barcode

Hippo on his Vespa

Tundra

Miss Clito

Ladybird

Short and Tall

Unexpected

Dreaming About Tea

Black Sheep

Gumball Candy Cat

Home

Crazy Creatures

Sleeping Bunny

Letting Go

Tarsier

30 Best Illustrator Tutorials of 2009

Sonali Vora — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:41:05 +0000

Adobe Illustrator is a great designing and vector software for drawing. With the introduction of each newer versions, it keeps getting more and more powerful and indispensable graphic design tool. This also means that you have to keep learning something new everyday to enhance your skills and add efficiency to your workflow.

We have featured some of best tutorials during the year 2008 and again we are very excited to bring to you a compilation of Best Illustrator Tutorials during the Year 2009! Below you will find 30 handpicked best and excellent Adobe Illustrator tutorials published on web during the Year 2009.

1. How to create a Television Icon

This easy step by step tutorial will show you how to create a a retro television icon just with some basic shapes and gradients.

2. How to Create a Golden, Vector Compass in Illustrator

This tutorial will take you through the steps and techniques of creating a golden compass.

3. Mastering masking in Illustrator

A tutorial that shows you the range of brilliant features hidden within Adobe Illustrator’s masking tools.

4. How to Create a Web Site Mascot

This tutorial gives an overview of how to develope a character from the initial brief through to the final site mascot and then to go on to create several poses for different parts of the site.

5. Illustrator Tutorial: How to Make an Icy Cocktail

This tutorial will explain how to draw a refreshing cocktail drink in illustrator.

6. Illustrator type technique using shapes

Illustrator type technique using shapes on how to create a logo.

7. Draw a Cute Purse Using Simple Shapes

In this tutorial, you will learn to create a very simple, clean handbag icon.

8. How to create a paisley seamless vector pattern

This tutorial takes you trough the process of making a vector paisley seamless pattern using Adobe Illustrator.

9. Create a Happy Sun Character in Illustrator

Learn to create a fun sun character tutorial. This intermediate tutorial is great for logos, children illustrations, and other projects relating to climate change.

10. The Hidden Power of the Average Command: Creating Swirly Type

In this tutorial you will explore the “Average” command in Adobe Illustrator, and learn how to use it in rather unusual way. In this case, you’ll create abstract swirls using relatively simple methods and apply it to type.

11. 3D Vector Maze/Labyrinth Using Adobe Illustrator

This tutorial shows you how to create this 3D labyrinth.

12. Illustrator Tutorial: How to Draw a Vector Kiwi

This tutorial teach you how to make a vector kiwi in illustrator using effects like Texturizer, Pointillize, Grain and Film grain.

13. Create incredible 3D type-based infographic art

Learn how to use Illustrator to create 3D technical-style illustrated lettering for artwork and infographics.

14. Create An Awesome Space Rocket in Illustrator

Draw a shiny, awesome-looking space rocket in Adobe Illustrator using advanced techniques such as gradient meshes, pattern brushes and opacity masks.

15. Create a Character Mascot with Adobe Illustrator CS4

This intermediate Illustrator tutorial will show you how to create a vector character mascot from a sketch in Adobe Illustrator CS4. The techniques in this tutorial can easily be applied to other illustrations, icons, and design elements; as well as legacy versions of Illustrator.

16. Ten Illustrator power moves you MUST know

Ten Illustrator power moves to speed your workflow.

17. Rapid-Fire Illustration Tutorial

A rapid-fire Illustration Technique which shares with you is a little illustration short-cut.

18. How to Create Funky 3D Springs in Illustrator

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create 3D springs in Illustrator. It uses 3D Revolve Tool and some manual effort to obtain this quality vector result.

19. Create a balanced T-shirt graphic

In an era of tough T-shirt design competition, this tutorial shows you how to make sure your threads are quality.

20. Mastering Illustrator Effects

Read this tutorial to learn how to save time by using Illustrator Effects and work more efficient.

21. Rad Pattern in Illustrator that Makes you Dizzy

In this tutorial I will show you how to create a rad pattern in Illustrator that will definitely make you dizzy. It uses basic tools such as Rectangle Tool, Ellipse Tool and the Blend Tool.

22. How to create a funny insurance agent

This tutorial will teach you how to draw a funny insurance agent using just basic shapes and pen tool.

23. Logo Design Process and Walkthrough for Vivid Ways

Design process and a walkthrough of how a final logo is created in Adobe Illustrator.

24. Design amazing mosaic effects

This tutorial shows how to create a cool look using Illustrator’s Symbols and Global Colors.

25. 20 More Useful Adobe Illustrator Menu Tips

Useful tips on Illustrator’s menu commands.

26. Create cool character art

Learn how to create charmingly appealing character art in Illustrator (and a bit of Photoshop) with this guide.

27. Create a Cute Furry Vector Monster in Illustrator

Follow these steps in Adobe Illustrator to create your very own super cute fuzzy monster character.

28. How to Create a Vector Illustration and Prepare it for Micro-Stock Sale

This tutorial details a professional workflow for creating vector illustrations and prepping the artwork for micro-stock websites.

29. Create a Realistic Candy Bar in Illustrator

A step by step tutorial required to create a realistic candy bar using Illustrator.

30. Elegant gradient ribbon in Illustrator

Learn how to create a elegant gradient ribbon illustrations in Illustrator.

38 Inspiring Vexel Artworks & Tutorials

Sonali Vora — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:17:40 +0000

“Vexel” is a combination of the words vector and pixel, and it is used to describe a style of digital art which is entirely pixel-based, but looks like vector art. Vector uses mathematical equations to create lines and shapes in image whereas vexels are raster works in pixels.

Vexels can be created using any graphic programme like Photoshop, Gimp, Flash, Freehand, Illustrator etc. or the combination of one or more. Vexels are quite flexible to create and there are various methods of creating vexel art but the overall process is to stack shapes of a certain shape and color to create a whole image using multiple layers, one can also use gradients, paintbrushes, airbrushes or any freehand tool like pencil to give it a desired and unique appearance. What makes vexel arts so amazing is that each piece takes hours to complete which requires patience, hard work and talent.

Below you will find some amazing vexel arts for your inspiration and some excellent tutorials to get you started vexel art.

Rain

Icon

Can You Guess? Answer

Vintage Beauty

Dotted

Color My World

Dove

Old Vexel

Lily Allen

Natalie Portman

Enchanted

Digital Portraits (Vexels)

Temple

Joy to the World

Resist

Art Elysse

SUMMER

I Love DA

Happy Birthday Manda

nothing.at.all

He is already gone

Flux

D.R.E.A.M.S.

Reese

2008 Quarter 3

Throne – done

Bonbon

Feel

Tutorials:

Vexel Start Tutorial

Vexel Tutorial – Hair

Vexel Tutorial

Create a Basic Vexel Image

Vexelling Hair

Create a Complete Vexel Image Using Photoshop

Vexel Tutrial for The GIMP

Something Red Walkthrough

Vexel Eye Walkthrough-Tutorial

Photoshop Vexel Demo

30 Best Inspiring Vector Figure Illustrations

Sonali Vora — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:18:12 +0000

Figure illustrations require a lot of skills, time, patience and great understanding of human anatomy. Enormous amount of time goes into drawing the details like hair, face, body posture and facial expressions to to bring the characters to life. For this article, we will look into the web to bring the 30 best vector figure illustrations for your inspiration. Enjoy the post!

1. Vector Kid

2. Gipsy Light

3. Spectacle 2008

4. Stare

5. White Diamond

6. Session

7. In Colors

8. Lamb

9. Forever Beautiful

10. Coca-Cola

11. Nocturna

12. Ginger

13. Summertime

14. Brooklyn’s Finest

15. Burning Water

16. Heart Of Africa

17. Head in the NonExistent Clouds

18. Ewa

19. Colorful Face

20. Love

21. Oriental Portrait V

22. Daniel Dume Poster 1

23. The Pain of Love

24. Vector Work

25. After Party

26. In the life of a Procrastinator

27. Waved Dancer

28. Different Stuff

29. Resolutions

30. My Fair Lady

Huge Collection of High Quality Patterns

Sonali Vora — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:46:15 +0000

The use of patterns in art and design projects are varied and well known. There are many sources from where you can find free raster or bitmap patterns, but there are not much when it comes to good high quality free vector patterns. So, in this post, we have listed a compilation of good quality and useful free illustrator vector patterns for download.

To edit the patterns in Adobe Illustrator, you can access the Patterns in the Swatches panel.You can customize existing patterns and design patterns from scratch with any of the Illustrator tools. There are many advantages of using seamless vector patterns. It is scalable to any sizes without any loss of resolution and you can change the colors, fill, stroke to suit your project. Thus, making it completely editable, modifiable and flexible.

1. Floral Vector Pattern

2. Redmillion Dotted Pattern

3. Royalty-Free Illustrator Vector Swatch Patterns

This is a free set of 8 Adobe Illustrator Swatch Patterns.

4. Monochrome Geometric Patterns

100 free seamless vector pattern swatches (also as symbols) for Adobe Illustrator CS and higher.

5. Seamless Retro Vectors

6. Summer Floral Wallpaper Vector

7. Free Photoshop and Illustrator Patterns

8. Free Vector and Pixel Repeat Patterns – Leafy Set 1

9. Fifties Wallpaper Pattern

10. Batik is Beautiful – Free Vector Swatches

11. Green Floral

12. Swatch-free-vector

13. Free Vector and Pixel Pattern – Antique Engraved

14. 13 Free Vector Grunge Patterns

15. 5 Free Seamless Vector Patterns

16. Free Vector Repeat Patterns – Retro Set 2

17. Victorian Scrapbooking Seamless Pattern Swatches for Illustrator

18. Free Vector and Pixel Patterns – Grungy Circles Set 1

19. Ornate Flourish & Pattern

20. 25 Free Vector Grunge Patterns

21. Swirly Summer Floral Pattern Vector

22.Scandinavian-style simple patterns

23. Pattern Set 2

20 seamless pattern swatch for Illustrator.

24. 54 Pattern Swatches

25. 25 Woven Plaid Swatches

26. Paisley Seamless Pattern

27. Free Vector and Pixel Repeat Patterns – Modern Floral Set 3

28. 10 Lovely Valentine’s Day Heart Patterns

29. Free Vector and Pixel Pattern – Hand-Drawn Scrolls

30. Patternlicious Polka Dots Pattern

31. Free Vector and Pixel Repeat Patterns – Organic Set 1

32. Swirl-pattern-free-vector

33. Seamless Swirls Vector Freebies & Micro Tutorial

34. Wire Mesh Pattern

35. Classic pattern

36. Basketweave

37. Seamless-flower-pattern

38. 52 Halftone Patterns

39. Free Vector Repeat Patterns – Modern Floral Set 2

40. Waves and Ridges Illustrator Swatches

41. W Morris Thistle Weave

42. Free Vector and Pixel Repeat Patterns – Ornate Set 1

43. Seamless-pattern-free-vector

44. Pattern

45. Red-floral-pattern

46. Floral Vector Pattern in ai

47. Free Seamless Patterns & Illustrator Swatches

48. Jungle Wallpaper Pattern Vector

49. Very flowery PS and Ai free patterns

50. Seamless Vector Pattern

If you found anymore great vector patterns, feel free to share!

Illustrator Tip #14: Pasting Smart Objects in Photoshop

Sonali Vora — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:18:23 +0000

Using both Photoshop and Illustrator is a common work flow process in many projects. In this small tip, I will show you how you can use Illustrator’s objects, shapes or text as Smart Object in Photoshop and still keep them editable in Illustrator.

In this example, I have created a shape using Star Tool, Pucker and Bloat Effect In Illustrator.

Next, I want to import it into Photoshop, so I select the shape and choose, Edit > Copy (Ctrl+C) to copy the text.

Create a new document in Photoshop and paste the text by choosing, Edit > Paste (Ctrl + V).

In the corresponding dialogue box, select Smart Object radio button and hit OK.

Your text should be pasted as a Smart Object in Photoshop, hit Enter on the num pad or checkmark on the Option Bar to commit it.

Now for some reasons I want to edit the object. For that, just double-click on the Smart Object icon in the Layer Palette. Photoshop will open a dialogue box, hit OK.

The object/shape will automatically open in Illustrator, edit the object or if you have any text or shape do the edit as you want, here I edited it a bit and added a another overlapping shape and also changed the color of the object to red.

After you are satistied with the edit, select File > Save and close the file and voila the changes will be automatically reflected in your Photoshop document.

Illustrator Tutorial: Warp Text Inside A Heart Shape

Sonali Vora — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:30:52 +0000

In this tutorial, we will see how we can warp the text around a shape or a object. This technique will show you how to combine the text wrap and heart shape together to achieve the text wrap effect. This tutorial will concentrate on how to use Envelope Distort feature in Illustrator to achieve this effect. You will also learn some new techniques along the way. For this to work effectively, first we have to decide on a suitable shape. Secondly, we will need to decide what word to warp inside the shape. Normally a short phrase works best. And finally, we need a thick and fancy font to pull the trick.

For this tutorial, we will be using a heart shape since Valentine’s Day is around the corner. We will be using a font Coaster for the words. We will write the words, “Vector Love” to declare out love for vectors. But you can choose any shape, fonts, words etc… Experiment with different shapes and words to see which works best. Also, if you are using more complex shape or curved lines just be careful that the words remain legible.

Step 1:

Draw a heart shape with Pen Tool (P). Fill it with red color or any color you wish and set the stroke to None.

Step 2:

Select the heart shape, copy it by clicking Edit > Copy and paste using Edit > Paste in Front. Select one of the heart and in the Layer Palette. Hide and lock it by clicking on eye and lock icon. We will use it at the end of the tutorial again.

Step 3:

Now the next step is to divide the heart shape in three different parts. keep the Fill to None and set Stroke to white color. Adjust the Stroke Weight (Window > Stroke Palette) to about 5 points. With the Pen Tool (P), draw two lines as shown in the figure below. You can also draw a slight curved line as well, but for the purpose of this tutorial, we will keep things simple.

Ensure that the start and end points of the lines is outside the heart shape as indicated by blue circles. After each line press Ctrl/Command and click outside the shape to deselect.

Step 4:

Select both the lines that we drew in Step 3 and choose Object > Path > Outline Stroke.

Step 5:

Then Select All (Ctrl/Command+A) and choose Window > Pathfinder. Click the Subtract from Shape Area button while holding down Alt/Opt Key.

After that, select the shape and click Object > Ungroup to ungroup. Now your heart shape should be divided in three parts.

NOTE: If you are using Illustrator CS3 and above and able to handle the mouse quite well, you can divide the shape with Eraser Tool (Shift + E). Double-click on the Eraser Tool to adjust the Diameter and other parameters. Pen Tool (P) will work better if you want to divide the shape in more complex curves.

Step 6:

Using the Type Tool (T) type “VECTOR”. Press Ctrl/Command and click anywhere on the artboard to exit the text box. Then, type “LOVE”. Keep the font size to around 150 to 190 Points. I use the font Coaster Black in this example as mentioned above.

Step 7:

Select the word, “VECTOR” with Selection Tool(V). Choose Object > Arrange > Send to Back (you can also access that by right clicking on your letters while it is still selected).

Now press Shift Key and with the Selection Tool (V) click on top heart shape and “VECTOR” and choose Object > Envelop Distort > Make with Top Object. Keep the Smart Guides On(Ctrl/Comm + U) to help you see your shape if the letter gets hidden behind the shape.

Step 8:

Repeat the process mentioned in Step 6 with the word “LOVE”, select it Send it to Back, then select (with Selection Tool-V) the bottom heart shape and the letters while holding down Shift key. And choose, Object > Envelop Distort > Make with Top Object.

Step 9:

Now we are almost done. If you wish to change the colors of the text, you can do it by selecting them all (Ctrl/Commmand + A) and then choose Object > Envelop Distort > Edit Contents. I kept the colors same as black.

Finally, just unhide the heart shape that we have hidden and locked in Step 2. Click on the eye button to unhide it. I have changed it’s Fill color to a shade of pink. I also deleted the unwanted shapes left over from the other heart shape as we do not need it. Now it should look something as shown below.

Step 10:

Finally, to make an interesting background, I use a free vector graphics Halftone-Heart (from Qvectors). Open up the file and copy paste it on a new layer in my document. Drag the layer below so that it is behind the heart shape. Fill it with the same pink color and set the stroke to none.

I also deleted the excess paths with Clipping mask. Draw a square shape with Rectangle Tool (M). Select both shapes (pattern and square) then choose, Object > Clipping Mask > Make. Finally, fill it with a Radial Gradient to get the following image.

Here is the another example. I changed the colors and grouped (Object > Group) the entire artwork. Next I apply Effect > Distort > Glass using the following parameters:

And below you will see a another example image I made long time back using the same technique as shown above with the words, “Is That You?”. You can see the finished piece at my dA.

The key is to experiment with different shapes and text, I hope you have learnt something new in this tutorial. I will love to see what you have done using this technique.