Hey man welcome. Have you tried tutsplus.com?

yeah but im just looking for little tips
like “instead of using _____, use ____ and then use _____ for better results” stuff like that

Oh gotcha. Well to tell you the truth that’s going to be hard to find. Especially on illustrator. That kind of stuff you kinda learn the more experienced you get with the program. It helps taking a class to learn what all the tools do, so then you know what to use when to make your process faster.

haha my schools design class is a joke.
but yeah thanks, that in itself was kindof a tip

Really? mine is pretty good. we learn a lot of good tips

Almost instant pattern brush goodness.

step 1: make some gapless line work in illy with the artistic, calligraphic brushes set to pressure, double tap for setting feel me. + use the blob brush yo.

Step 2: pathfinder merge that stuff.

Step 3. put down a rectangle of solid white color under the lines, merge again. ungroup, and delete your extras.

Step 4. pick your black (y) for magic wand, and lock it down command number2

Step 5. use shift click to select the pieces you want to color and with them still selected change the color from the pulldown at the top or the swatches yo.

Step 6. unlock it all and group it.

Step 7. additive liberty live reflect x and live reflect y make a few copies

Step 8. (e) eraser tool hold option for a straight cut, trim to you’re liking.

Step 9 object/ expand appearance.

Step 10. make it a square using the width and length box at the top, it’s ok if it gets skewed a little just round to the nearest whatever make it a square mmmkay

Step 12 reduce opacity and change to multiply, copy and flip it 90 degrees, use align to selected objects and center it.

Step 13 Drag and drop it in your swatches panel

Step 14 pick your blob brush and from the pull down where the stroke is, pick your new pattern

Step 15 doodle and enjoy. cheers.

Hey Quaker, that’s a nice little tute.
Illustrator just seems so much more,...not sure how to say it,... analytical?,.... more so than photoshop. What I mean is, it just seems so much easier for me to be self-taught and be comfortable w/ “freestyling” in PS than I’m finding it to be in Illustrator.
I guess PS is just more intuitive to me.

So, for like the technique you show above, did you just figure that out on your own after becoming comfortable w/ the seemingly endless menus w/in menus?
It just boggles my mind to see all the “places” you can go to in Illustrator & I’m just wondering if you come across knowledge like this from simply exploring or more like formal classes, etc….

thanks for the great feedback :D
yeah i just learned how to do the whole envelope thing this morning
MIND WAS BLOWN

A little of everything, adobe t.v. has some great tuts, and I like go media a lot, and messing around and asking other people how they did things too. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the features, I feel the same way about photoshop. Artistic calligraphic brushes with the pressure turned on and that live reflect trick are what I use most. You don’t need to know it all, just enough to get the job done.

quakerninja said: You don’t need to know it all, just enough to get the job done.

well i don’t know if it will help but try to use different line weights in your designs. I don’t use brushes i redraw the path with pentool. Because you don’t have exact control while using brushes. Take your time and try to redraw the paths according to how thick or thin you want to use them. And learn to use the pathfinder tool, it saved my ass too many times. Illustrator is vast but once you will be used to it, you will do the things your way.

MEKAZOO said: well i don’t know if it will help but try to use different line weights in your designs. I don’t use brushes i redraw the path with pentool. Because you don’t have exact control while using brushes. Take your time and try to redraw the paths according to how thick or thin you want to use them. And learn to use the pathfinder tool, it saved my ass too many times. Illustrator is vast but once you will be used to it, you will do the things your way.

Mr. William Beachy over at GoMedia has a fairly good little tutorial explaining line wights and how to go about drawing in Illustrator going from sketch to illustration. I consider it a must read for anyone wanting to do this type of work:

http://www.gomediazine.com/tutorials/from-sketch-to-vector-illustration/

Very helpful for anyone who is learning the ins and outs of Illustrator.

great feedback right there ^^
thanks a bundle