ILLUSTRATING USING PHOTOSHOP AND ILLUSTRATOR: THE BASICS WITH @trewselfloveclub
- @fashionclassof2020
- Apr 9, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 17, 2020
Here at Fashion Class of 2020, we have teamed up with Trew Self Love Club to create you an easy, comprehensive guide to creating digital illustrations using Photoshop and Illustrator. Due to the current circumstances, many of us are turning towards technology to complete our collections, however, many of us are used to creating our illustrations by hand, hopefully this can help you with that!
When you get up illustrator on your laptop or computer, press ‘start new’ and select the size you want, I went for a customer size. Then once you’ve got your file, you then press file open and open up a an image that you want to trace over, once that is open drag it into your file. When it is in the file, you can then move it about to fit the page or wherever you want to put the image. When the image is still selected, you can turn down the opacity which will be on the right hand side of the screen, this can help you see the lines for when you draw over the image and able to see the finer details too.
Once you’ve turned down the opacity of it, deselect it and create a new layer. It’s important to not draw on the image layer! Thus, create a new layer which can be seen on the bottom right corner of the screen. Then once you’re on the drawing layer, select the drawing tool on the left hand side; also a quick tip, instead of drawing straight lines (as this is what the tool is used for) and then adding anchor points to curve the lines out, instead, when you get to apoint where it needs to curve, hold on to your mouse and it will create a curved line. This is a lot easier and quicker to help you speed through your drawings.
Keep continuing to draw over the image until you’re happy with it. Depending on the image, this may take a while, it also depends on how much detail you want to create within the image too.
Once you’re happy with the illustrations, I usually tend to tweak how thick or thin the lines are. Usually, illustrator usually keeps the lines at 1, which is good for outlines and defining images. So for all the lines within the drawings, such as seam lines, shading, and small detailing I usually highlight all the inner lines and thin the lines out to about 0.75 oe 0.5 depending on how detailed the drawing is. Once tweaked all of the lines; SAVE IT!
When you’ve saved your illustration, then load up Photoshop. I only use two tools on illustrator and that the paint brush and eraser tool - it’s simple and basic but I still manage to get a good outcome of my drawings. When the programme is all loaded, create a new document, preferable the same size you made on illustrator. Then open up the drawing on photoshop and then drag it on to your new document, you can move the image around by select ‘cmd T’ or ‘ctrl T’ this allows you to make the image larger, warp it or however you want the image to look.
Once you’re happy with the position of the image, lock that layer and create a new layer. In photoshop, you will be using a few layers, for this drawing I think I used about 8 layers. Make sure that the illustration is at the top of your layer list too, otherwise when you start to paint on top of it, the image will get lost and you won’t be able to see the lines of the image. So, when you’ve create a new layer to paint on, select the brush tool which will be on your left side of the screen, if you hover over them the name of each tool will come up. Next, find a colour that you want. I used pantone colours and wrote down the hex code of them so I can use them for all of my drawings - but it entirely up to you on what colours you use. When you’ve finished painting one part of the drawing, create a new layer and start colouring in the sections.
When you’ve finished the drawing, make sure to press save! If you want to put your logo or another drawing in (like what I have done) press file open, then drag in onto the document and see where it best suits and erase any other part of the image that you don’t want to include in the drawing.
Saving it. Make sure to save the document whenever you can! When you’ve absolutely happy with the drawing, save it as a PTS. file and aso a JPEG file too, this will merge all the layers together and can then use it to post on your social media or portfolio.
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