Adobe Illustrator: Getting Past The Blank Canvas

Adobe Illustrator is a widely used vector drawing application with three main areas of functionality. Firstly, it allows the creation of corporate and other graphic artwork for high quality printing. Secondly, it can be used in the web design process, allowing you to build the overall design as well as individual items like icons and buttons. Illustrator is also a basic page layout program suitable for originating single page documents like CD covers, book jackets and posters.

Illustrator is often the final member of the Adobe Creative Suite that people will get around to learning. Delegates coming on our Adobe Illustrator training courses will often complain that the program seems less inviting and exciting than Photoshop. And, although Photoshop is a complex package, they find themselves using it for all their graphic work, even things which would much easier to create in Illustrator. Part of this difficulty in getting started with Illustrator is the fact that it often appears to new users that the program is hard work: you create a new file and you're presented with a blank page. You have to create your drawing entirely from scratch.

As Illustrator trainers, we take on board the fact that running an Illustrator training course involves more than just tuition of the use to tools and techniques. To get delegates feeling enthusiastic about using the program, we also need to rid them of their fear of the stark blank canvas facing them every time they create a new file. We have identified four main techniques for ridding new users of "Blank Canvas Syndrome". Firstly, it is important to clearly identify the type of artwork you want Illustrator to create for you. Secondly, use Illustrator's Live Trace facility to create vector elements which can become a starting point for your own artwork. Thirdly, use background images as guides as you create your own drawings. And, fourthly, copy, reuse and modify elements that already exist within your own drawings.

The most successful Illustrator training courses that we run are for people who know exactly what they want to use the program for. It could be cartographers, technical illustrators or fabric designers; as long as they have a specific brief, we can show them the best techniques to solve their particular requirement. However, for a lot of delegates, Illustrator is something they feel they could and should be using but they don't really know where to start.

For users who are using the software in a less clear-cut and focused way, we always try to point out on our Adobe Illustrator training courses that you don't have to start with a blank canvas. We always recommend that wherever possible you import relevant graphic material such as scanned images, keep them on a background layer and use various Illustrator tools and techniques to either trace the images or simply to use them as guides and points of reference as you are creating your own original artwork.

Adobe once owned a program called Streamline which was a utility for converting bitmapped images into vectors. Though they have now discontinued it, Streamline lives on in the guise of Illustrator's Live Trace function. This allows you to convert bitmaps imported into Illustrator into vectors, either by choosing one of the preset settings or by creating a custom set of parameters. The program is very fast, so it is easy to experiment with several different settings to see what gives the best results. Once you have got your vectorised version of the artwork, you spend a bit of time cleaning it up and it's good to go.

As well as tracing, it is also often useful to just keep an image on a background layer and constantly refer to it as you create your artwork. It can also be useful to reduce the opacity of the background image to about 40 or 50 percent so it doesn't become obtrusive. Sometimes you may manually trace around areas of these reference images. Other times, you may just use it for reference, so you can check the dimensions or shape of elements that you create in the foreground.

Almost all drawings you create will contain elements that either repeat or are variations on the same theme. Naturally, you will not create such elements from scratch each time you need them. Illustrator contains a wide variety of useful techniques for duplication and transformed duplication of existing elements within your drawing. It also allows you to apply multiple attributes such as fills and strokes to the same object. Thus, for example, you can create the appearance of several concentric circles simply by adding several strokes to one circle (using the Offset Path effect to get the right position).

In short, that blank Illustrator page can soon be filled with lots of funky stuff. The trick is to realise that, once you decide what it is you want to create, your can accelerate the process of drawing by tracing elements from bitmapped images, using images as points of reference and basing new items within your drawing on elements that you've already created.

By: Andrew Whiteman

The writer of this article is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Adobe Illustrator training courses in London and throughout the UK.

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