Learn how to use Adobe Illustrator to make graphics and drawings. This class will teach you the basic of digital imaging as well as the essentials of Illustrator needed to get you started on creating and editing your own graphics. Beginners welcome, Can you draw a circle or a square? You will fit right in. Looking to get into Web Design, add this class to your studies. Just looking for a refresher class to update your skills? I bet you'll learn a few things about Illustrator CS3 and it might even be fun.



Visit Arts class blog for frequent Illustrator updates.

Follow Art on Twitter!

LESSON 1

A good house starts with a solid base then the frame then the walls then the roof. The time to ask about the base is before you get the frame up.

To drive this home and to start getting you feet wet. I'd like you watch a couple of short videos (15 minutes tops) and ask yourself what does Art wants me to get out of watching 20 year old video? Hint Before you look where your going, you look at where you came from Grasshopper. You can also skip the first 3 minutes of the first video.

Welcome back, and if you haven't gone yet. We'll all waiting for you. Anyway, here's the point. You have to work with the tools, to know the tools, to produce artwork. Oh wait I think I said something about learning principles with the how and way already. Let's try this, those videos were 20 years old and talked about Illustrator as a brand new product. They talked about features like drawing lines, curves, circles and squares. They talked about changing colors and moving and editing shapes. Now Illustrator is on its 13th version (adobe cs3) and while a number of things have changed or been added, it is still about drawing lines, curves, circles and squares. While changing colors and moving and editing shapes. Adobe has just built upon it base features, version after version until they had a frame with walls and it now has a roof and the house is now called the Adobe Creative Suite. As you progress in the class, I want you to think about that build upon what you learn and apply to it to new versions of stuff you learn. I also want you to start looking at pictures and drawings and break them down into lines, curves, circles, squares and hey lets add it triangles. What is a picture of a car but a rectangle (a type of square) with some sleek curves and sharp lines and circles? What is a football field but a rectangle with lines within a circular stadium? Trust me it will sound less like crazed ranting as you work along.

And now for our Feature Presentation
Yes, we are actually going to start talking about the actual program. Yes we are … Hmmm, nope sorry I lied a big lie and we have to talk about stuff that relates to the program but isn't quite the actual program. I'm so very very sorry. I have a Pc running windows xp. I don't have a Mac computer yet, again very, very sorry, forgive me. Here is some good news. Adobe Illustrator work very similar on either a pc or a Mac. One of the big differences is that Apple Macs have an Apple menu and a Illustrator menu that does a lot of the things found in several of the windows menu bar. While PCs have has more of a general window toolbar with menu items like File, Edit, and Help. So most of my screen shots will be from the PC version but functionally Illustrator has the same features and tools for either version. Mac people you will just have to look a little harder to find the menu mentioned in snapshot. I'll try to help you as much as possible. I do know people with Illustrator on Macs and can get snapshots from them if needed to solve some problem. On a side note this is where posting questions works very well. A classmate with a Mac might know where to find a menu or a folder and by all means I encourage the class to jump in with their answers. We all learn that way. Some other differences between Mac and PC versions are the preferences menu is located in different places and you're going to need to know where to find it later. On a PC, it's located under the edit menu at the bottom. On a Mac it's located under the Illustrator menu.

Continued...