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Importing my sketches that will be used as a base.

Quick reference

Importing Sketches

Importing my sketches that will be used as a base.

When to use

Whether you want to trace a drawing or a photograph in Adobe Illustrator, the way that we import and treat these types of references will remain roughly the same; We always want to make sure that our files are set up properly before we begin tracing anything.

Instructions

  • Open the Bull_Sketch.jpg file in Adobe Illustrator
  • After opening the image you will need to go to the Object Menu and choose Artboards > Fit to Artwork Bounds. This will ensure that the size of our artboard and the artwork itself are the same.
  • Next, bring up the Layers Panel by either selecting it from the right or by going to the Window Menu and choosing 'Layers' from the menu.
  • Double click just to the right of the layer name to bring up the Layer Options. 
  • Once the dialog box appears we will rename our layer to 'Sketch' and then check off the box that says 'Dim to' after making sure that it's set to 50%.
  • Apply the changes and then add a new layer above the Sketch layer and call it 'Trace' or something similar.
  • Be sure to check that the Color Mode of your document is RGB by going to the File Menu and choosing Document Color Mode > RGB.
  • From here, go ahead and save your file and give it a convenient and easy to remember name. 

Hints & tips

  • Dimming your base image or sketch will make it easier for you to follow the lines once you begin tracing in Illustrator and is very similar to using tracing paper.
  • It is always a good idea to be mindful of the color space you are working in. If you are working on a project that you intend to print, you will want to work in CMYK mode, but for everything else we will be using RGB. 
  • Don't worry if you create something in RGB Mode that you will want to print later because you can easily convert from one to the other.

 

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  • 00:04 Once you've gathered some references and inspiration, you can begin sketching.
  • 00:08 And this is something I've already taken the liberty of doing,
  • 00:11 prior to getting started, just to speed things up and make it a little bit easier.
  • 00:15 But all we're going to do here is open up the bull sketch that I've provided, so
  • 00:20 that you guys can see it and see what it looks like in Adobe Illustrator.
  • 00:24 Now, when you first open it up, the image is gonna be kind of long and
  • 00:28 not really fitting into our work space that well.
  • 00:30 So the first thing we're gonna do is actually select it and then come up to
  • 00:34 the Object menu here and go all the way down towards the bottom to Artboards and
  • 00:38 choose this option that says Fit to Artwork Bounds.
  • 00:42 Now once you do that, it's going to rearrange our artboard to fit exactly
  • 00:45 to the same size as our sketch.
  • 00:48 So now, if I zoom out a little bit,
  • 00:49 you guys can see that, the sketch in it's entirety and how it looks.
  • 00:53 And if you wanna fit it on your screen, you can kind of press Cmd + 0,
  • 00:59 And zoom out using command and the minus sign or in with command and a plus sign.
  • 01:03 Until you can view the entire thing.
  • 01:06 All right so from here, I wanna bring up my layer's pallet so
  • 01:10 over here you can see in the panel all the way at the bottom you have these
  • 01:14 two squares on top of each other and that's the icon for our layers.
  • 01:19 Now if you don't see this over here by default of course you can come up to
  • 01:23 the window menu and choose Layers here or press F7 on the keyboard.
  • 01:28 Okay and in the basics course as I mentioned,
  • 01:30 I show you guys how you can kind of customize shortcuts
  • 01:33 if you find that you're using a lot of the same commands over and over again.
  • 01:37 Okay but for now, I'm just going to open up the layers palette and
  • 01:40 you'll see that all we have is one layer.
  • 01:42 So, the first thing I wanna do is come just for
  • 01:44 the right of the name of this layer, and double click on it, okay?
  • 01:48 And here we have a box that will allow us to rename our layer, so, let's just
  • 01:52 go ahead call it sketch, and there is one other thing that we wanna change here.
  • 01:57 This option here, this is dim images too, let's go ahead and check that off.
  • 02:01 And we can leave it set to about 50%, and then hit OK.
  • 02:06 So now, not only has it renamed our layer,
  • 02:08 but you can see that our sketch layer has been dimmed slightly.
  • 02:12 Now, why do we wanna dim this layer?
  • 02:14 Well, the main reason is so that we can come over here, create a new layer on top
  • 02:18 of it, and now we can kind of follow the shapes and trace it with our pen tool.
  • 02:23 And, because our sketch is black and if we use our pen tool and
  • 02:27 we're tracing with black, we wanna make sure that we can see our lines.
  • 02:31 So, another kind of work around that you could do is either change the color of
  • 02:36 your outline with the pen tool as you're tracing it.
  • 02:39 Or you could actually change the color of your sketch so
  • 02:42 instead of having black lines, you could maybe take it into Photoshop and
  • 02:45 change all of the black to red or to blue.
  • 02:47 But now that we've added a second layer here over in our layers palette,
  • 02:51 I'm just gonna go ahead and lock the sketch layer.
  • 02:55 This way it will be locked in place and I won't mess it up or
  • 02:57 be drawing right on top of this layer.
  • 03:00 So we've got a brand new layer here that we can double-click to rename.
  • 03:04 And I'm just going to call this one Trace.
  • 03:08 And that is the basic way that we're going to set up our document.
  • 03:11 And the last thing we wanna do here is just come up to the File menu and
  • 03:15 make sure that we're in RGB mode for this.
  • 03:18 So if I come down here to where it says Document Color Mode,
  • 03:21 you'll see that we are in fact in RGB, which is exactly what we want.
  • 03:25 So, before we continue not that we've set up our file let's just go ahead and
  • 03:29 save this so that we have a file to start with.
  • 03:32 And I will just call this Bull_Sketch_Logo,
  • 03:38 or actually let's call it Mascot_Logo_Design.
  • 03:45 Perfect, now we're gonna go ahead and just save that to our desktop for now.
  • 03:49 But you guys can save it in any folder that you like.
  • 03:52 And now we can begin to trace our sketch.

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