Create a distressed graphic with texture

Adding textured artwork in Illustrator can add depth as well as interest to otherwise flat artwork.

In this tutorial, you'll add texture to this T-shirt artwork using an Adobe Stock image.

You'll trace this texture, and you'll apply it as an opacity mask.

So, you can see both artboards in this lesson file, choose View, Fit All in Window.

Now you can see an image of the texture on the right.

In order to use it as a mask, you'll trace it to convert it to vector artwork, so it can be edited and resized easily without losing quality.

With the Selection Tool, click to select it.

Now to trace it, click the Image Trace button over here in the Properties panel.

There are a lot of great settings depending on the content of the image, but Silhouettes will probably work best for this image.

As you can see, when it was traced, a lot of the detail was lost.

So, you'll need to refine the tracing in the Image Trace panel. click here to open the Image Trace panel.

Now there are a lot of options for adjusting the tracing, but you're just going to focus on a few.

Click the arrow to the left of Advanced here to show more options.

Now the Paths option here determines how tightly the tracing fits to the imagery. dragging the slider closer to 100, means tighter fitting and more detail.

With the Corners option here the closer to 100% on the right, the less smooth the corners are.

So, drag the Corners option all the way to 100% so the artwork isn't as smooth looking.

Now the Noise option here will really help this image.

The lower the value you set for Noise, the smaller the details that it can trace.

A higher value means less is traced.

Drag the slider all the way to 1, so you have the most detail showing.

There.

Now you can experiment with some of the options here but go ahead and close the Image Trace panel.

In order to be able to edit this traced artwork you'll need to expand or commit to the tracing.

So, click Expand in the Properties panel.

Now you can use this artwork as a mask to add texture to the T-shirt artwork.

This can be done in the Transparency panel.

You can open the Transparency panel over here in the Properties panel by clicking Opacity but opening the panel separately would actually make it easier.

So, choose Window, Transparency all the way down here, to open it up.

To use the texture artwork as a mask for the T-shirt artwork, drag the texture artwork on top of this artwork.

Drag across both to select them.

In the Transparency panel, you can see all of the selected artwork in a thumbnail on the left.

To mask the T-shirt artwork with the texture artwork on top of it, click the Make Mask button.

And by default, the artwork on top, which was the trace texture, is used as the mask.

Now the Clip option here which is on gives the mask a black background.

It also crops the mask artwork to the boundaries of the masking object.

But the texture is also black.

In a mask, black hides artwork underneath.

That's why you can't see the T-shirt artwork right now.

To see the artwork again, deselect the Clip option which now means where there is black in the texture, the T-shirt artwork gets hidden.

Now the texture is only affecting the T-shirt artwork and not anything outside of it.

Which is good, that's what we want.

It's hard to tell that it's really doing anything because the background is black.

So, you'll unlock the background shape, and you'll change the fill.

Choose Object, Unlock All.

With the rectangle selected, try changing the fill.

You can now see that the texture is transparent in the artwork.

Now that the texture mask is applied, you can edit the T shirt artwork, the mask or both.

If you need to edit the mask, first select the T-shirt artwork again, then click the Mask thumbnail here.

Now at this point, you could draw more artwork, duplicate the texture to add even more, erase parts, whatever you want to do to edit the mask.

To simply move it, drag the texture by some of the black artwork otherwise you won't move it to reposition it.

Now in order to do anything else like add other artwork, you need to make sure to click on the T-shirt artwork thumbnail.

That's really important.

Otherwise you're stuck editing the mask.

To see the final artwork, choose Select, Deselect.

The method I just showed you is one way of many to add depth and interest your artwork.

The next time you find yourself wanting to add some texture or some interest to your artwork, try adding texture as an opacity mask to give your artwork a distressed look.