Creative freehand drawing in Adobe Illustrator

If you want to draw freehand in Adobe Illustrator, there are various tools that can help you. In this tutorial, you will learn how to effectively utilize these tools to bring your creative ideas to life. Whether you want to create simple shapes or complex drawings, this tutorial will guide you through the most important functions and settings you should consider.

Main Takeaways

• There are different tools for freehand drawing in Illustrator: the blob brush, the pencil tool, and the shaper tool.
• You can adjust the stroke weight, smoothing level, and other properties of your brush tip to achieve interesting effects.
• It is also possible to change colors afterwards and edit lines to achieve the desired result.

Step-by-Step Tutorial

Let's start with the different brushes in Illustrator.

To use the blob brush, click on the brush group on the left side. Select the blob brush and start drawing. You will see that your drawing is automatically vectorized.

When you draw a line, it is automatically converted to a vector format, giving you a lot of freedom in drawing. You can always delete your drawing using the undo function if you don't like something.

The brush tool offers you the possibility to make many adjustments. For example, you can determine the smoothing level of your line. A high smoothing reduces wobbles and ensures that your line looks cleaner. If you move the slider all the way to the left, you'll see how much movement remains in your drawing.

On the other hand, if you move the smoothing slider up, the line will become much smoother. This is particularly useful when you want a precise representation.

You can also adjust the size of the brush and experiment with roundness. Reduced roundness can lead to a calligraphy effect.

By changing the angle of the brush stroke, you can create various interesting drawings. The brush tool is especially effective when using a graphics tablet, as it allows you to implement various pressure sensitivities and tilts in drawing.

Now let's look at the pencil tool. To use it, select the pencil group on the left side. This tool works similarly to the brush tool but offers you different effects. With a simple stroke, you can draw different lines.

If you don't like the line thickness, you can adjust it by changing the color and outline at the top left of the menu.

If you have multiple lines that you want to change, you can draw a selection box by holding down the control key to select multiple lines at once. Then, you can change the color for these selected lines on the left side.

The pencil tool also offers you many other options. For example, you can change the direction of your drawn line afterwards, giving you more flexibility.

In addition to the pencil tool, there are other useful tools in Illustrator. One way to improve your lines is with the smoothing tool. This allows you to smooth over your existing lines to give them the final touch.

The eraser tool allows you to easily remove unwanted parts of your drawing. Especially when working with complex shapes, this can be very helpful.

Another useful tool is the join tool. With it, you can connect multiple lines to create closed shapes. Select the lines and use the join tool to merge them together.

Summary

In this tutorial, you have learned the basics of freehand drawing in Adobe Illustrator. From using the dropper brush to the pencil tool to the various options available to help you perfect your drawings – you are now ready to bring your creative ideas to life. Experiment with the different tools and discover which effects you like best.