coyleart

Illustrator Tutorials

In the past year, I've posted a series of Adobe Illustrator video tutorials to my Coyleart YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe so you can be alerted to my next Illustrator tutorial postings in 2012! Here are links to the most useful Adobe Illustrator tips you'll find among my YouTube Illustrator tutorials:

Illustrator Tools:

The Eraser Tool

The Spiral Tool Explained

The Illustrator CS5 Width Tool

The Blob Brush

Illustrator Techniques:

Clipping Masks in Illustrator

Layer Clipping Masks

Hand Lettering in Illustrator

Opacity Masking

Illustrator Essentials:

Vectors vs. Pixels Explained

RGB vs. CMYK

Repeat Pattern Basics in Illustrator

Wacom Pen Tip Feel - Pressure Sensitivity Tutorial

A Shorpy Christmas

When you're in the mood for nostalgia, hop over to one of my favorite sites, shorpy.com. There just aren't enough hours to look through the thousands of amazing vintage photographs. Happy Holidays!

Eyedropper image color in Illustrator

A fellow artist introduced me to a blog called design seeds where visitors are treated to a steady stream of inspiring color palettes. Each palette is "packaged" beautifully by designer Jessica Cololuca with photography and a row of color chips.

When you find such inspiring color in your online travels, you want to bring it along with you into Adobe Illustrator and let it enliven your work. In Illustrator though, you can hit a speed bump in the process. So, I have a simple tip for those who want to sample color from pixel based images like jpeg and png files.

If you drag an image from an open browser directly into an open Illustrator document, the image file will automatically embed. It's the quick and dirty way to get an image into your file - and for the purposes of sampling color, it's perfectly fine. (To keep your AI file size low, you'll want to delete the reference photos when you're through with them.)

Next, you grab your Eyedropper tool and click on the color in the image you want, just like you would in Photoshop - only, in Illustrator you may come up with a "none" fill on your color panel. How frustrating!

The easiest way to get around this is to hold the shift key as you click with the Eyedropper tool, and the color will appear in your color panel. (Thanks Clayton! my personal PS guru - sometimes he outdoes me in AI too.) Holding shift while using the Eyedropper tool allows you to sample a single color from within a gradient too.

To follow the Adobe Illustrator logic for this problem though, double-click the Eyedropper tool in the Tool Panel to open it's options dialog. If you have "Appearance" checked, then that is the culprit.

When you have Appearance checked in Eyedropper Options you are essentially sampling the no-fill, no-stroke shape that contains the image you are trying to sample. It's what you see when you look at the image in outline mode. The Eyedropper samples that appearance, rather than the pixels. When you uncheck the Appearance box, the Illustrator Eyedropper will sample the color from a photo. This is why I like the shift key trick so much, because I like to leave Appearance checked in the Eyedropper options.

Finally, try holding the mouse button, or the button on your Wacom stylus when using the Eyedropper tool in Illustrator to sample color from other open windows on your screen.

It's always nice to get a little help (and good links) from my friends!

Manly Christmas Tree

May your days be manly and bright! You'll find this foil-stamped Christmas man tree by Laura Coyle at your local Papyrus store.

Christmas Tree-O Vol 2.

This is the second year I've gotten to be a part of this recording and I hope it happens every year because Christmas music is so much fun and making music with these musicians is a treat. The musicians, Kevin Hyde, Marlon Patton, Robby Handley and Mace Hibbard are all Atlanta favorites. Christmas Tree-O 2011 was recorded at drummer Marlon Patton's studio, Illegitimate Music. I sing on two tunes, "Baby It's Cold Outside," a duet with Kevin Hyde and on "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm," with Mace Hibbard on sax. The Christmass Tree-O link above will take you to Bandcamp to listen and purchase. Happy Holidays!

Ink & Paint is live! Workspace Ergonomics!

Thanks to all who came to the chat last night! We talked about my new Ink & Paint  Adobe Illustrator class and even had a helpful discussion about ergonomics! Everone had great suggestions on how they deal with long hours at the computer.

For some it was taking breaks, practicing yoga, and there was even a participant who uses a tabletop easel with their Wacom tablet. I swear by my keyboard platform. It allows me to keep my tablet and keyboard low, so it hovers above my lap. A common complaint was that desks are too high, and chairs are hard to fit if you aren't very tall, (I'm 5' 4") so the keyboard platform has helped me customize my standard height desk.

The next chat will take place January 18th, and it's open to anyone enrolled (past or presently) in any of my classes. I'll have Illustrator running for the chat, so I'll be able to do some demonstration, and we'll even talk about the repeat pattern from the end of the Ink & Paint class - it's a complex pattern, so it will give us a chance to talk about it in more detail.

I'm switching gears for a couple of days to do some singing gigs for holiday parties and then I'll be back to Illustrator. I'll have a new post coming with a new Illustrator tip for you. In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying the season!

Illustrator Chat Wednesday

This Wednesday, December 14th at 9pm EDT US, I'll be hosting a chat for Adobe Illustrator users on ReneeTV.com. I'll be talking about my brand new class that launches Wednesday, Ink & Paint. If you've ever wanted to create flowing lines and freehand shapes with pressure-sensitive brushes that you can use with your Wacom tablet - this is the class for you! This self-paced class covers working with Calligraphic Brushes and the Paintbrush and Blob Brush tools and guides you through an art project in Adobe Illustrator.

We'll also talk a bit about my new monthly chat series for ReneePearson.com Illustrator students. Access to my monthly chats will be a new bonus that's included with your enrollment in any Illustrator class on ReneePearson.com. That means if you've ever taken a class, or if you sign up for a class before the chat date, you're invited to join us for Illustrator "shop talk" and demonstrations every month! Our first chat of the series is scheduled for Wednesday, January 18th at 2pm and 9pm EDT US.

I've been moving toward self-paced classes because they suit everyone's schedule the best, but I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity for us to meet and talk about Illustrator that we've always had from our instructor-led class chats. So now we'll have the best of both worlds!

I hope you'll join us this Wednesday - this chat is open to everyone, regardless of whether you are enrolled or not, so come on over!

Win a Wacom on Renee Pearson.com!

©Wacom

On Tuesday, December 6th at 9pm EDT US, hop on over to join the chat at ReneePearson.com. Renee's special guest is Joe Sliger from Wacom. Joe will be giving a pen-centric tour of Photoshop - and - he's giving away a brand new Bamboo Capture tablet to one lucky attendee. Details here. Don't miss it!

And in other tablet-related news, my latest self-paced class for Adobe Illustrator, Ink & Paint with Laura Coyle, is nearing completion and I'm so excited!

As soon as I know the official launch date, I'll post it on my blog - I'm finializing the last couple of lessons now. I'll be hosting a chat to introduce the class on Wednesday, December 14th at 9 pm Eastern US time on Renee TV. This chat will also be the launch of my monthly Illustrator chats that will be open to all paticipants who have ever enrolled in one of my online Ilustrator classes on RP.com. 

For those in far-flung time zones, I promise we'll be doing the monthly chats at 2pm and 9pm EDT US starting in January. We'll send an email to all Illustrator students in early January to announce the first chat date and give you the link, so stay tuned!

For those interested in Ink & Paint, this online Illustrator class is a self-paced project workshop, similar in length to my other project workshops, Swirl Shop and Holly Shop. The class is $20.00, for Illustrator versions CS4 and CS5, and is for users with a pressure sensitive tablet.

In Ink & Paint I'll give thorough demonstrations of the Paintbrush, Blob Brush and their settings in Adobe Illustrator. We'll create a set of Calligraphic Brushes, perfect for inking linework and coloring - and then I'll guide you through a layered floral motif project that includes my original tracing art and custom color palette. In the end, you'll have art you can use in a repeat pattern in your personal projects.

Even if drawing is not your thing, the included tracing art will give you an enjoyable opportunity to practice and develop your hand-eye coordination with the Wacom Tablet, an essential skill for anyone who works with a tablet. And if you love the idea of digital drawing, this project will give you the chance to look over Laura’s shoulder and learn her process for creating freehand art in Illustrator that you can apply to your own work.

Coming soon to ReneePearson.com stay tuned!