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Adobe Illustrator Tutorials - Best Of

By Smashing Editorial, February 5th, 2008 in Tutorials | 232 Comments | Forum

Over years Adobe Illustrator has become the standard application when it comes to illustration design. Artists, illustrators and graphic designers use Illustrator to create vector-based graphics which — contrary to raster-based editors such as Adobe Photoshop — can be easily rescaled without the loss of quality. E.g., Illustrator is often used to quickly transform hand-drawn sketches on a sheet of paper into lively and colorful digital images.

However, to master Adobe Illustrator isn’t easy; and the creating process of professional illustrations requires both time and patience. Therefore tutorials can turn out to be real life- and time-savers as they show exactly what needs to be done in order to create professional illustrations and how masters of illustration actually manage to do their magic. One year ago we’ve presented a hand-picked collection of Illustrator tutorials. Now it’s time for a fresh portion of healthy and creative Illustrator material.

In this post we present a collection of excellent Adobe Illustrator tutorials for beginners and advanced designers. The new selection isn’t enormous, but big enough to provide you with some good starting points.

Please notice that

we’ve selected only those tutorials which haven’t been featured last year or were released after the article was published.
you might also be interested in Adobe Photoshop Tutorials - Best Of we’ve presented few weeks ago.

Illustrator Tutorials

Creating a Crazy Cool Logo
In this post I will show you how we created the logo. I will skip the drawing parts, yes there were tons of drawings before going to the computer, because when they stole my computer and backups in 2006 they took all my photos of the drawings.

Spice up Pie Charts
For some charts you might only want to spice up the most important slice or the biggest one. Although most topics aren’t as fun as mutations, any sort of added graphics make boring charts look a lot better.

Wolf Drawing Tutorial
Learn how to create an illustrated wolf from the hand-drawn paper sketch to final product with Illustrator and Photoshop.

Skull Tutorial
An alien skull tutorial. Editorial illustration.

How I Do Stuff Tutorial (Video-tutorial)
It’s just a speed-up video of how one can go from a sketch to a mediocre illustration using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

Test Your Creativity
“Using a provided set of basic shapes I have to compile them to create my illustration. The theme is up to me but there are some ground rules such as you cannot edit the shapes or distort them, you however can subtract from them using any of the shapes in the provided set.”

Vintage T-Shirts
It’s easy to create authentic collegiate T-shirt designs using Illustrator, Photoshop and a good old-fashioned iron. In this tutorial, illustrator Derek Lea reveals how combining both applications can create stunning results.

Gigposter Design: The New Sex
Learn how to create an impressive gig poster design with Illustrator.

Pirate cartoon tutorial
Learn how to create a vector pirate cartoon character from a hand-drawn sketch.

Pixels and Vectors Tutorial
The gap between working with pixels and vectors in Photoshop and Illustrator is closing rapidly, thanks to Smart Objects. Derek Lea explains all while creating a highly textured yet vector-sharp masterpiece.

Comic Book Style Tutorial
Learn how to create illustrations and turn them into flyers or posters. The end product will be a flyer which was created for an art show.

Creating Road Maps in Adobe Illustrator
Sooner or later every designer comes across the exciting job of producing a map, whether it’s on a leaflet or website the overall aim is to visually document a particular area of land to allow for people to find their way to a place of business or event.

Cutaway Car Illustration Tutorial
In this lesson you’ll learn how to create a 3-Point Perspective-view drawing of a generic car, working from plan and elevation view reference only.

White Tiger Tutorial
A cartoony white tiger tutorial. A poster illustration.

From Sketch To Vector Illustration
A technique of vector illustrating that takes a little bit more skill is starting with hand-drawn sketches. This tutorial captures the whole design process — from scratch.

Retro Car Tutorial
All you need is Illustrator, some inks and some brushes to turn a photograph of a car into a vector illustration.

Intricate Patterns In Illustrator Tutorial
This tutorial will show you how to create intricate patterns in Illustrator super quickly. Stuff that would take you hours to draw manually with the Pen Tool takes just seconds when you use this technique. Video-version is also available.

Not as easy as it looks: A beveled star
A simple and effective tutorial on how to create a beveled star — in 7 steps.

Tutorial: Transform, Style, Blend
Do you like things to have a bit of randomness, an element of surprise? Me too. Learn how to create random swirls in Illustrator with few steps.

Tutorial: Transform, Style, Blend
In this video tutorial you’ll learn how to illustrate an iPod Nano from scratch using the 3D Effect in Adobe Illustrator.

Ellipse Drawing Tutorial
Creating a Circle in Perspective with Adobe Illustrator. More excellent tutorials for beginners.

How To Make 3D Vector Vintage Stars
I’m going to walk you through a technique to create vintage looking 3d stars in Illustrator. You guessed it, 100% vector.

Poster Illustration: Go Forth and Create
Suffice it to say this tutorial is my personal switcher story from FreeHand to Illustrator and contains the good, the bad and the ugly details of both apps. Tutorial Includes Notes in both ‘English’ and ‘Español’.

Create a Vector RSS Icon with Illustrator
Probably one of the most popular and recognisable icons in the web universe; the RSS icon is displayed on many website to indicate the availability of a subscription feed. There are pre-made icons you can download and place on your website, however this tutorial cover the process of creating your own custom vector RSS icon in Illustrator.

Vehicle Vector Tutorial
Learn how to design a vector vehicle with Illustrator.

Fertile Mind Tutorial
 This tutorial will walk you through an illustrative banner for the Portland Oregon AIGA chapters ‘Urban Forest Project.’

Face, Hair, Clothing Illustrator Tutorial
Learn how to create real-looking human face, hair and cloth.

Illustrator: Golden Selection
Have you ever wondered why a profound piece of art is so compositionally pleasing? The artist probably employed the use of the Divine Proportion, which is a phenomenon that suggests that there’s a mathematical equation that’s consistent with the aesthetics of good composition.

Tropical Transparency Effect
Learn how to create a bouquet of Tropical Flowers. This tutorial is a breeze. You’ll blow through this really fast.

Complex Circular Design Techniques
Creating intricate circular designs and patterns may look difficult because the shapes can be very complicated, but you will be surprised at just how easy making these shapes can be. I will go over some neat tricks, tools, techniques, and settings that will have you pumping out perfect circular designs in no time using Illustrator.

Illustrating the Flower Pattern
This article will outline the main steps on how I made the flower pattern in Illustrator. Hopefully, this can answer your question.

Drawing a Character’s Face in Illustrator
Creating a cartoon or human-like caricature is a fun and rewarding project to do in Illustrator. Not only that, but if you’re pretty good with the pen tool, it doesn’t take very long. In this tutorial I will be creating an elf. Be sure to look at refrences of other cartoons or caricatures to make sure your shapes are correct.

Ornate Lettering Process
I’m going to show you the process as to how I do my ornate lettering. This is a new design I did for Stone Sour that utilized this technique. Now right off the bat, this is not a step by step tutorial. It’s more of a look behind the scenes into how I work.

Transform Again
You can achieve surprisingly cool results using the Transform Again feature in Illustrator starting from a simple shape. As you all know simplicity is my motto. Today I try turn this into practice again. So sit tight for another step-by-step tutorial using this simple but oh so powerful feature.

Create A Blob Monster in Illustrator - The Scream
Over that last couple of days i’ve been playing around in Illustrator a lot make some basic shapes and images. One of my best creations is the Blob Monster called the scream. It is really simple to do and doesn’t take long to complete. This technique can be used for nearly any type of simple shape / monster.

Drawing Homer Simpson
Illustrator is a great program. It offers so much versatility in creating vector images. Hence why it is the top vector program out there. As a beginner to this program I want to share with you a tutorial that is simple to follow that you can use to draw Homer Simpson of The Simpsons.

7 Things You Didn’t Know Adobe Illustrator Could Do
These are: The Blend Tool / Adding Lines Between Lines… The Mesh Tool / Adding Shading To A Shape… 3D / Entering The Next Dimension… Patterns / Making Fills Interesting… Symbol Sprayer / Splatter some vector… Blur / Smooth Out The Vector…. Transparency / Bringing Depth To Overlaying Shapes…

Creating Seamless Patterns
One of the frequest questions I get from readers is how you create seamless patterns in Illustrator. Today I’ll explain how I create such patterns and how you can scale and rotate them using different settings in the Scale tool options.

Creating Pins
Pins are popular these days, so I thought why not write a tutorial on how to create these in Adobe Illustrator. If you’ve ever wondered how to simulate this realistic looking pin or button effect, here’s your chance to learn.

Complicate Orb Icon
This tutorial will teach you doing more complicate button icon or Orb effect Icon using Illustrator. This is quite a long tutorial.

Retain Spot Colors without Losing Your Marbles
Are you using Photoshop to create something with both transparency effects and spot colors? You may be better off with Illustrator instead.

Stylish Vector Flower
Learn how to create stylish vector/line flower with Illustrator Blend Tool. This Adobe Illustrator tutorial is great for creating background and large print illustration. More Illustrator tutorials from nDesign.

Illustrator Tutorial: Creating Vector Snowflakes
Just in time for the holidays… a tutorial for creating those fun, festive holiday snowflakes. These vector flakes are a must-have for turning your holiday designs into a winter wonderland. So sit back, grab a cup of eggnog, and feast your eyes on how amazingly simple it is to create a vector snowflake.

Illustrator Tutiorials Screenshot

The Complete Digital Comic, Part 2: Inking in Illustrator
This is part two in my series of tutorials about how to make comic book art on the computer.

Instant Op Art
Use Illustrator’s transform functions to create a stunning op art piece with a real sense of movement. Mark Mayers shows you how… This is a PDF-Document.

Creating Reflecting Web Icons in Illustrator
One of the looks of "Web 2.0" is the aqua icons that Matt Kloskowski shows us how to make in the first issue of Adobe Illustrator Techniques print issue. Another look is the reflecting icon. The clean, crisp look of these attractive images makes clicking through a website’s navigation fun. Here’s how to make one of those neat icons.

Draw Ballon in Illustrator Tutorial
Simple, yet effective. In few steps to a nice illustrated baloon.

Illustrator 3D Effect Tutorial
3D Effect slide show tutorial on Flickr.

Sources and Resources

65 Adobe Illustrator Tutorials
ComputerArts.co.uk Tutorials
A growing collection of high-quality tutorials for Illustrator.
Adobe Illustrator CS3 Tutorials
Over 7.5 hours of free video-tutorials for Adobe Illustrator
The Tutorials Pool on Flickr
Tutorial By Picture Pool on Flickr

Published in Tutorials, February 5th, 2008
Tags: adobe, illustrator, software, Tutorials

1.

Jeremy (fine art of fathering) (February 5th, 2008, 8:07 am)

man this is the best resource on the net…thanks for all the great posts!
2.

Craig S. (February 5th, 2008, 8:12 am)

I love this post! Very helpful and inspiring - thanks!
- craig
3.

mikemike (February 5th, 2008, 8:32 am)

quit spamming your own site with all the compliments.
4.

dragoshell (February 5th, 2008, 8:56 am)

you made me want to work with illustrator =P~
these tuts will keep me busy for the next few days :D
thanks for another smashing post ;)
5.

gr8pixel (February 5th, 2008, 9:21 am)

thank you guys! this is absolutely super!!
6.

Thomas Pries (February 5th, 2008, 9:21 am)

It seemes like the link on “how to make random swirls” is not right…
7.

therapix (February 5th, 2008, 9:26 am)

Thanks! I suck at vectorial !!!
8.

arnaud (February 5th, 2008, 9:45 am)

Beautiful list.
9.

Jeba (February 5th, 2008, 10:31 am)

Nice smashing list as usual ;)
10.

Creativepayne (February 5th, 2008, 10:38 am)

This is awesome! I will have to spend the weekend going over these.

I mainly use Lynda.com for tutorials which I definitely recommend, but it’s not free.

Thanks again.
11.

Fredrik (February 5th, 2008, 11:00 am)

Thanks for all the links!
12.

alanbernard (February 5th, 2008, 11:02 am)

Me too, definitely. Great set here, thank you very much.
13.

psd2markup (February 5th, 2008, 11:03 am)

Wow. My girlfriend will be very happy to hear about this article! She will love me more! :))
14.

My Tutorials (February 5th, 2008, 11:18 am)

Another great collection. Thanks!
15.

Krzysiek (February 5th, 2008, 11:23 am)

Very very good collection. :) fajna sprawa:)
16.

Richi (February 5th, 2008, 11:23 am)

Nice work! Just forwarded the link to all my friends. And Im sure they’ll love it.
17.

Paul (February 5th, 2008, 11:30 am)

I’m just starting with Illustrator, and it was slow going trying to find actually good tutorials. When I saw this in my feed reader, I almost had a joygasm. Thanks!
18.

Doug Vander Meulen (February 5th, 2008, 11:32 am)

Here is the random swirls url:

Link [freetransform.net]
19.

Mike (February 5th, 2008, 11:50 am)

this is without a doubt the best collection of Adobe Illustrator tutorials on the net!

thanks SM! *thumbs up*
20.

tzVectorz (February 5th, 2008, 12:06 pm)

Wow what a great rundown, it would take hundreds of hours to pull off this stuff.
The awesome thing is all of these sites are likely to have even tons more tutorials.
thanks for highlighting these sites then!
-ty
21.

ViniMan (February 5th, 2008, 12:07 pm)

That’s good stuff.
Link [news.deviantart.com]
22.

Obleek (February 5th, 2008, 2:25 pm)

I’ve been wanting an awesome list of AI tutorials forever. Thanks so much for compiling this!
23.

Quakeulf (February 5th, 2008, 2:46 pm)

Thank you so much for this article!!! I love Illustrator but I know I have a lot to learn, and this will REALLY help me learn it for my job!
24.

oldSkull (February 5th, 2008, 3:17 pm)

Tutorial: Transform, Style, Blend —> bad link, same of ”Not as easy as it looks: A beveled star” ;-)
25.

Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz (February 5th, 2008, 3:42 pm)

@oldSkull: thank you, fixed.
26.

emptyzpace (February 5th, 2008, 7:00 pm)

love all content.
27.

Walter (February 5th, 2008, 7:13 pm)

Thanks!
28.

Superxtian (February 5th, 2008, 7:35 pm)

Great stuff!! i really like it ^^
29.

Praveen Vijayan (February 5th, 2008, 9:42 pm)

Thanks…. Nice collection..
30.

Zain bin Bayyah (February 5th, 2008, 11:37 pm)

thanks for the great collection …. you are the best
31.

Edgars (February 6th, 2008, 12:05 am)

lol :D i think dudes have done a good job and that’s the reason of plenty of good words ;)
32.

balu (February 6th, 2008, 12:22 am)

super man its really worth …..smashing magazine…is my best dude where i am learning every day and getting new ideas in design ..th ks dude
33.

Fritsie (February 6th, 2008, 4:15 am)

Sweet collection. And quite handy too!
34.

Himanshu Kapoor (February 6th, 2008, 6:47 am)

Thanks a lot. This is gonna sharpen my Illustrator skills
35.

katrina (February 6th, 2008, 7:17 am)

thx, nice. have got inspiration)
36.

Sean Hodge (February 6th, 2008, 7:51 am)

Thanks for referencing my site AiBURN, with the Tropical Transparency Effect Tut. This is a great roundup. I was hoping you were going to do one. I’ve been putting together a lot of Illustrator resources and you found some that I wasn’t aware of. I’ll have to check them out. Thanks.
37.

Fabio Sasso (February 6th, 2008, 10:00 am)

First thank you very much for listing my tutorial (creating a crazy cool logo) among these amazing tutorials.

keep up the excellent work.
38.

doc (February 7th, 2008, 2:06 am)

Hello,

Can anyone here respond to a question? I have a mini Mac for starters and had hoped to run some very old Adobe Illustrator software, i.e, version 5.0 from about 1994. I called Adobe and of course its too old to upgrade and the current Macs apparently cant recognize this old fashioned code. Thus, does anyone have any ideas as to if there are ways to run old versions of software like this? I just want some basic geometry tools and dont want to spend the dough on the latest Adobe stuff. If anyone has suggestions or can offer advice, Id appreciate your time!

Thanks,

Doc
39.

Kiran Kumar (February 7th, 2008, 3:49 am)

That complex circular design is amazing, I plan to print that on a largecanvas for my dining room. Now that would look amazing!
40.

paul (February 7th, 2008, 4:27 am)

doc::

Why not try bit torrent?

OR

find an ooooooold i mac on ebay, they go for about $90!!
41.

francesco (February 7th, 2008, 6:52 am)

men! it was weeks i was searching good illustrator tutorials!
this llist is perfect!
smashing you are always the best!
42.

Jan (February 7th, 2008, 6:56 am)

Nice Collection of Tutorials. Thanks again Guys!
43.

Bdesign (February 7th, 2008, 9:20 am)

Great resources. Thx for sharing them with us!
44.

doc (February 7th, 2008, 10:37 am)

Hello,

Last night I found a new free vector drawing program which seems to be what I need; have not had time to work with it, but there are several new shareware and free programs that are available for drawing, which is nice to see!!

here is a link for you to look into FYI: Link [www.inkscape.org]
45.

Kunal (February 7th, 2008, 11:03 am)

yeah this is sweet !
thanks to sm i have started doing rnd of tons of things which were not my domain
46.

deepak sharma (February 8th, 2008, 3:14 am)

hi every body this deepak sharma
47.

Sam (February 8th, 2008, 6:17 am)

great guys as usual :-)
“Ellipse Drawing Tutorial” and “Cutaway Car Illustration Tutorial” goes to the same link…I think it needs to be fixed
48.

Michael (February 8th, 2008, 6:38 am)

great resources!

*******************************
we love T-shirts
49.

chris (February 8th, 2008, 6:39 am)

Congratulations.
Good job !!
50.

Ehab (February 8th, 2008, 6:49 am)

If I can master these, I will be on top of the world !
51.

achmadbiz (February 10th, 2008, 6:13 am)

Great list as usual, Thanks SM :)
52.

Indian (February 10th, 2008, 10:23 pm)

aaaah, I was seriously learning some Javascript dedicatedly and there you go spoiling it with illustrator tuts…
53.

Budhi Nandika (February 18th, 2008, 12:50 am)

They’re awesome Illustrator tutorials , thank you very much
54.

Pol (February 18th, 2008, 3:29 am)

Thanks so much, excellent work!!.

Best wishes ;)
55.

TELEVISION_SPY_YES_VOYEUR (February 25th, 2008, 1:50 pm)

WOW remind me to get Illustrator..do you need one of those drawing board thingies..can’t remember what they’re called..scribble pads or something..basically an electronic pen?
56.

erica (March 2nd, 2008, 8:41 pm)

Although I have been using Photoshop since it was version 3.. I am very new (as In I got it yesterday) to Illustrator. i thought it would be simple, but I find myself aghast at that transition. Between the tutorials here and Bittbox, I am finally getting a grip on Illustrator. Thanks so much Smashing Magazine for the tutorials and inspiration!
57.

Jennifer Lee (March 14th, 2008, 2:49 pm)

I have so much to learn about illustrator… All these tutorials are really going to help me expand the type of work I will make in the future. Thanks a bunch!
58.

TuanAnh (March 23rd, 2008, 3:41 am)

thats so wonderful.great thank!
59.

Leea (March 30th, 2008, 4:56 am)

Great collection !
Thank you :)
60.

AnnaMaria (April 30th, 2008, 8:51 am)

This is such an awesome site thank you so much!!!!
61.

ALEX (May 15th, 2008, 8:21 am)

thanks so much…….cool
62.

Andrea D (May 20th, 2008, 2:39 pm)

I have just started to design digital papers, brushes and elements for the digital scrapbooking industry and was struggling to realise the extensive list of design ideas I had in my head as i was only using Photoshop Elements. I looked at the Photoshop CS3 package and nearly passed out at the cost - after reading your list of tutorials I now know I only need illustrator. I can now realise a lot of my designs without the headache!

AWESOME!
63.

Miekun (May 21st, 2008, 10:00 am)

thanks for everything………….. i love it so much, thanks again!!!!!!!!!!!!!
64.

Joro (June 9th, 2008, 7:00 am)

This page has everything i need!
Thanks
/Jonas
65.

ADriana (June 18th, 2008, 12:44 pm)

Can somebody please tell me where I can find illustrator tutorials for begginers, I can do most of the things here because I don’t now the basic…
66.

DAndrew (June 21st, 2008, 12:13 am)

This is the best thing that happend to me :) Thank you very very much :)
67.

Cole (June 26th, 2008, 3:53 pm)

These are okay. Nothing really spectacular.
68.

pinky (August 5th, 2008, 5:11 pm)

I cant wait to get started on Illustrator!!!!!!!! Great great great!!!
69.

MeiKeng (August 6th, 2008, 2:13 am)

Wow…. this was the greatest resources that i ever found in the net…. Thanks alot for the post…… Cant wait to get started with Illustrator
70.

MOUSUMI (August 15th, 2008, 3:06 am)

NICE…
71.

MOUSUMI (August 15th, 2008, 3:09 am)

Sir/Madam
I would like to learn Adobe Illustrator CS3 through net.Hope you will help me..
Thanking you
MOUSUMI
72.

Vaimum (September 2nd, 2008, 10:59 am)

Thank you! :)
73.

korean (September 18th, 2008, 5:37 am)

thank U for the this tutorial !!
74.

Pheello (September 20th, 2008, 3:02 am)

This is really Good stuff Guy!!!!!
75.

Lenong (October 26th, 2008, 7:56 pm)

completely worth to try, thanks a lot
76.

Muhammad Ahmad (November 4th, 2008, 10:50 pm)

some of tutorials seems HARD, but nice try, n good paves. thank u
77.

Sherien Jary (November 4th, 2008, 11:27 pm)

Very nice, please add one tutorial of how to create a calender by using illustrator and photoshop pleaaaaaaaase.

THANKS.
78.

Mike (December 3rd, 2008, 9:18 pm)

Great stuff. Check out some of my vector illustrations Link [www.zazzle.com] and let me know what you guys think. I do a lot of vector portrait.

Thanks!

Mike
79.

Aleso (December 7th, 2008, 8:13 am)

wow a lot of great tutorials. thanks
80.

drey (December 11th, 2008, 12:02 pm)

fantastic resource, thank you very much!
81.

Santhosh Kumar (January 3rd, 2009, 11:14 am)

Very helpful…thanks
82.

NIMALI (January 6th, 2009, 5:03 pm)

THIS COLLECTION IS GRADE. THANKS…….
83.

sam (January 31st, 2009, 1:05 am)

best great resources
84.

Designer (February 12th, 2009, 1:19 am)

thanks
85.

leog (March 6th, 2009, 8:09 am)

really grat post! very educational :D
86.

Copy Craft (March 30th, 2009, 5:01 am)

Really nice collection! Visually, on screen these are stunning but I would love to see how many of these come off when they are printed.
Copy Craft - copycraft.com
87.

paii (April 5th, 2009, 4:42 pm)

+10 :) esta para echar un vistazo
88.

Abhijeet Chavan (April 16th, 2009, 5:04 am)

This is god send blog to me :))
Kudos to Smashing… Hit Team
89.

Matt Clarke (April 21st, 2009, 4:42 am)

Thanks for the tutorials, fantastic! Cheers, Matt.
90.

bhupendra (April 26th, 2009, 10:13 pm)

best tutorial send my id.
91.

Chao (April 28th, 2009, 11:43 am)

Great abundance of helpful tutorials here! May I also suggest the following tutorial:

Link [www.logobee.com]

This is a pretty simple one, it shows how to create a particle effect for your design!
92.

Jumbo Shrimp (May 4th, 2009, 9:46 am)

yah dog after i got home from space i went straight to this i learned so much when im upp in space ima take my laptop and do this shit thanks man
love, sgt stud muffin
93.

Bill Murray (May 6th, 2009, 4:10 am)

yo man these tuts could use some work nah mean
94.

raw (May 13th, 2009, 12:19 pm)

man this is oh my… this is a great blessing from up above! God bless you for such help n inspiration!
Oh my… Thanx very very much for these resources!
95.

TotallyJamie (June 28th, 2009, 4:29 am)

I would like to say as a self taught illustrator, I rely a lot on tutorials online and this post is extremely valuable.. Keep this up!!

Link [www.totallyjamie.com]
96.

priyanka (June 30th, 2009, 12:37 pm)

excellent tutorial….it really helped me a lot. Thank you.