Make see-through surfaces

Illustrator allows you to create art of all varieties, from the highly stylized to the photorealistic. Here, digital design expert James Arnott shows how to make an impressively realistic and convincing wine glass using the software.

The tutorial gives you the tools to master transparency and translucency in Illustrator, including a step-by-step guide on using the transparency palette, blending modes and black-and-white gradients.

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How to Make Festive Vector Gift Boxes

Get ready for the holiday season with this festive gift box tutorial. Successful completion of this tutorial requires a solid understanding of Adobe Illustrator’s tools as this advanced tutorial moves at a quick pace. We’ll be working with Illustrators 3D tools, Brushes, Gradients, and Blurs to create these holiday presents.

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How to Create a Magnified Text Illustration

In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to create a realistic magnifying glass with shapes and gradients. You’ll also learn how to effectively use Illustrator’s text tool to create a three column layout, and then integrate this into an illustration. Let’s jump into the tutorial.

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How to Create a Magic Wand Icon in Illustrator tutorial

In this Illustrator tutorial, I will show you how to create a magic wand icon. This tutorial will utilize gradient feathering and some simple shapes. These techniques are easily translated to other icons, illustrations, and logos.

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Simple organic shapes with Illustrator

We start by creating a circle. Select the Ellipse Shape tool (L). Hold down Shift key while dragging. Turn on Smart Guides, go to  View > Smart Guides or hit command/control + u. Make sure your Rulers are turned on. Go to View > Show Rulers or hit command/control + r. Drag a horizontal guide from the top Ruler to the middle of the circle. Select the Rotation tool and click in the center of the circle to set the rotation point. Rotate the circle 45°. While dragging hold down Shift key so the rotation snaps to 45°. With Smart Guides turned on you should also be able to see when you’ve turned the circle 45°. Select the Direct Selection tool (white arrow) and select the path segment on the right of the circle. Hit the delete key.

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Illustrator tutorial: The Perfect Diamond

Drawing a diamond is pretty simple in illustrator. First, let’s do some research on the anatomy of a diamond. We don’t want to do some fancy cut and get rejected by our clients. Here’s a proportional diamond line art taken from the website. We will use this as a guide to help us create a perfect diamond.

First, place the line work by going File>Place and select the graphic. Go to Layers Palette and click the arrow to show the menu and select Template. This will lock and make the graphic transparent for easy tracing.

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Master painting in Illustrator – Transform your sketches into stunning textured artworks

Transforming your sketches into detailed, textured digital paintings takes time and patience – but the ability to magic up a scene and create it with flair is a key skill for any digital artist.

In this great tutorial, Patrick Auletto shows you how to develop a piece from a pencil sketch into a richly-coloured, stunning painting. The key to creating this type of illustration is to think of your document as a blank canvas, ready for paint.

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Inking and Coloring a Comic Strip in Illustrator

In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the steps of creating a comic strip using Illustrator’s Pen Tool, custom brushes and masking features. This is a fun tutorial that covers the process I use, while showcasing the comic strip I write called “The Brads.”

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Illustrator 3D Extrude & Bevel Tool – Create an Open Book

In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to create an open book mostly with Illustrator’s 3D Extrude & Bevel Tool. We’ll create open pages with graphics and add a wavy background. The book can be customized by applying your own graphics to the pages.

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Create a Glowing Vector Lightsaber

Create a new letter sized document. Use the Rectangle Tool (M) and create a rectangle 36 px wide by 216 px tall.

With the rectangle selected go to Filter > Stylize > Round Corner to bring up the Round Corners dialog. Change the Radius to 11 px.

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Design a disco ball with illustrator tutorial

I saw few Illustrator tutorials in the web, but i didn’t really like the final image, so I had to think and find the right way for drawing a more realistic disco ball… If you are interested, please see below the instruction
Create a New Document and then create a rectangular shape (I choosed ~ 175*175px). Fill it with bright radial gradient. Rasterize your image. In the top menu go to Object-Rasterize and just clik “ok” not changing anything there. Then enlarge your square a bit (~150%)

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Create a 3D Flowery Text Effect

Create a document of size 750×550 pixels.

Set the foreground color to #004B64 and background to #000000.

Using the Radial Gradient tool, drag a circular gradient from the top downwards.

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