If you missed the post about color, you may want to go back and check it out as it will directly correspond to some of the tutorials shown below. The tutorials below will help you learn how to do digital art using color throughout illustrator in places like the color picker, swatches, and the color guide. You can use these tutorials to not only learn how to do some digital coloring, but also further your knowledge of illustrator!
THREE VIDEOS on the color wheel: video 1, video 2, video 3
This three part series is a part of the larger “Learn the elements through Illustrator” series. Here you will learn a few tips on using some of the lesser known tools and techniques in illustrator as you create a color wheel. In the first video, you’ll learn how to use the Polar Grid tool. In the second, you’ll learn some text tool tricks. And in the last one, you’ll learn how to put the color wheel together.
- Tutorial Difficulty: 1/10
- Time to complete: 30 minutes
- Tutorial Type: Video
- 3 videos combined run time: 14:13
- Writer: Slow and easy to follow
- Adjustments for Cloud:
- What you need to know in order to do this tutorial: Nothing
- Tutorial corrections: none
- Ideas for creative license: Choose any font and shape that strikes your fancy!
How to Use the Color Guide • Adobe Illustrator Tutorial
Believe it or not, I learned so much from this tutorial! I simply loved learning more about the color guide and I will definitely be using it more in my own work. Be aware that you’ll have to sign up for their email list to get the free project files, but you can unsubscribe from the emails at any time. Teachers, you may want to do this and then make the files available to your students via google classroom or something similar.
- Tutorial Difficulty: 1/10
- Time to complete: 20 minutes or less
- Tutorial Type: Video
- Run Time: 7:39
- Writer: Slow and easy to listen to.
- Adjustments for Cloud: none
- What you need to know in order to do this tutorial: nothing!
- Tutorial corrections: none
- Ideas for creative license: I love the way that the Color Guide allows you to play with different color schemes! Play around with the different color combinations.
Illustrator Image Trace and Live Paint Bucket
This one is fun! It is super simple and it’s seriously just like coloring a coloring page. It will teach you how to color in digital art and how to turn an ink drawing into a coloring page and how to color it in Illustrator. (TIP: You can actually search for a coloring page instead of an ink drawing like he says in the video.)
- Tutorial Difficulty: 2/10
- Time to complete: 1 hour – depending on the complexity of of the drawing used
- Tutorial Type: Video
- Run Time: 9:07
- Writer: He works slow enough that he is easy to listen to and follow.
- Adjustments for Cloud: none
- What you need to know in order to do this tutorial: You’ll need to have access to both Photoshop and Illustrator.
- Tutorial corrections:
- There is only one correction, but it is a major one. I simply COULD NOT get the Image Trace effect to work in the same way that the presenter showed. In order to get it to work, I had to go to Object>Image Trace>Make and Expand with the image selected.
- Ideas for creative license: Why not try coloring an image twice, once with warm colors and once with cool colors and see how it changes the mood of the picture?
There you have it! I hope you know a bit better how to manipulate and change color in illustrator after you go through these tutorials!