Turn a hand-drawn sketch into vector art with the Pencil tool
For the template, I took a photo of my sketch, uploaded it to my computer, then placed it into a new document in Illustrator, and then just reduced the opacity so that I can draw over the top of it.
Before we begin, let's look at some useful settings.
The Fidelity slider controls how closely Illustrator follows your hand movements, especially useful if you don't draw with a graphics tablet.
Move it towards Accurate for more detail, or towards Smooth for cleaner curves.
It's worth experimenting to find out what feels most natural for the way you like to draw.
One feature that's easy to overlook is the ability to redraw part of an existing path.
To enable it, we'll turn on a couple of options.
From here, also select Edit selected paths and I always like to set this value around 20 pixels.
This means that if the new line you draw comes within 20 pixels of its original path, it redraws the path.
I'll show you what I mean.
Also, be sure to select Live preview and Live curve fitting to see a smooth and accurate preview of when you draw your curves.
It's so useful!
Now, instead of deleting and starting again, simply draw back over the section you'd like to replace.
Illustrator updates only that portion of the path.
Let's begin building our artwork and you'll see this in action.
We'll be using both strokes and fills for this with our chosen color palette.
We're going to quickly sketch out our waves.
Then for the shapes we need to draw our palm tree leaves, then the tree trunk, and then set the fill color for both.
And finally, our type, which will require a quick use of the Shape Builder tool to punch a hole in the R shapes.
Use Shift+M to activate the Shape Builder, and then hold Alt/Option key to subtract the shape.
Within just a few minutes, we've transformed a page of rough sketches into clean, editable full vector artwork while keeping all of that original hand-drawn personality.
You saw how we used the Pencil tool to trace our ideas in a loose and expressive way.
Now let's use the Curvature tool, which lets you draw flowy yet precise curves.
We're going to recreate this simple cloud shape, starting with our first point here.
We'll double-click to create a corner point, as this is where we'll eventually come back to close the shape.
Next, we'll click at the top of our first curve.
As we move around to place the next point, you can see Illustrator automatically creating that smooth curve for us.
We'll double-click here to create another corner point, and then repeat around the cloud.
When we get back to the start, you'll see a small circle, meaning the paths will connect to complete the shape.
We can then go back to any part of a curve or straight line to adjust the positioning and readjust the shape, and that quickly, we've used the Curvature tool to create a simple, smooth cloud shape using just a handful of points.
Our next project tackles a challenge many designers will recognize.
A client sends over a small JPEG of their logo and asks if it can be recreated as editable vector artwork.
Rather than relying on automatic tracing, let's rebuild it with the Curvature tool for greater control.
