How To Convert Drawing To Vector

Learn valuable methods for honing your cartoon and illustration skills in Illustrator.

Colorful graphic of a Southwestern scene with cactus and a coyote howling at the moon

Figuring out where to brainstorm and what to draw tin exist challenging. First, get yourself a sketchbook, take it with you wherever y'all become, and sketch your firsthand surroundings whenever you tin can. Emulating the work of other illustrators is also a peachy way to exercise and learn. Higher up all, recollect, the more you practice, the closer y'all are to finding your style—or something that sets you apart.

A person's hand with a pencil drawing various forms of cactus plants

Honing your drawing skills is an ongoing procedure that requires a lot of practice. From tracing a paw-drawn sketch to drawing from scratch in Illustrator, permit's look at some of the most common tools and workflows for illustrating.

Showtime by tracing

You can easily base of operations a new drawing on an existing slice of artwork by tracing it. If you lot sketch on paper, use Image Trace in Illustrator, which lets yous catechumen raster images (.JPEG, .PNG, .PSD, etc.) to vector artwork (shapes and paths).

Close-up on the left of a hand-drawn cactus, and the Image Trace properties box in Illustrator on the right side

Optimize creative freedom and control with drawing tools

If yous adopt to jump right into digital illustration, the Curvature, Pen, or Pencil tools are corking tools for illustration. The Pen tool in Illustrator is powerful, offer the most precision for creating curves and straight lines. Other tools, like the Pencil tool or Paintbrush tool, are ideal for expressive, complimentary-class lines. You tin can use layers in the Layers panel to lock and dim the image and draw over the pinnacle of the paradigm using any of the drawing tools.

A drawing of a cactus is light in the background, while the Pen Tool is being used to make points along the edge of the drawing

Stylize your artwork by adding texture

By applying a castor to new and existing paths created with the Brushes console, you tin add textures that add style and uniqueness to your artwork. After applying a brush, you lot can alter the stroke of the path and other properties in the Properties panel.

Brush options shown on the right, and a line created with the Pen Tool is now green over the cactus layer

Tip: The Hulk Brush tool is a great tool in Illustrator for inking illustrations like comic book art.

Illustrator is the industry standard tool for freehand drawing or tracing and recoloring your sketches to turn them into works of art. Any you create, y'all can use your illustrations anywhere—printed pieces, presentations, websites, blogs, and social media.