Illustrator is great for creating clean and precise illustrations, but some of the time you don’t want clean and precise. There are many illustrations that call for a sketchy or hand-drawn feel. Creating these effects are relatively easy with Illustrator’s Live Trace, Live Paint, Brushes and the ability to create you own brushes. Check out some of my sketchy illustrations on iStock for more inspiration.

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This post is an extension of my Watercolor Vector Flower Illustration tutorial that appears on VectorTuts.com. If you haven’t checked out the post, you should now! In the following tutorial I will explain how to create a couple watercolor brushes, adding to the VectorTuts tutorial, and at the end of the tutorial you can download some Free Vectips Watercolor Brushes!

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Illustrator has the ability to add raster effects to elements like outer glows, inner glows, and drop shadows. Vector art is great because you can scale them to any size. That is why I try not to use the raster effects in final output. One area this creates a problem, is drop shadows, but there are a couple of easy ways to add drop shadows using blends and gradients rather than raster effects.

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Last up for Vectip’s Texture Week is wood grain. The steps for this technique are very similar to the previous Brushed Metal Texture tutorial. It uses the same Graphic Pen effect but stretched a little more. It also uses the Warp Tool and Twirl Tool. Also like the other texture tutorials, this technique is easy and applicable in logos, icons, interfaces or pretty much anything.

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The second texture up for Vectips Texture Week is brushed metal. Like the previous Water Texture Tutorial, this brushed metal technique also utilizes Illustrator’s Effects. Again this tutorial is pretty simplistic when you break it down, and easy to replicate numerous times. You can use the brushed metal texture in almost anything, but I find myself using it in icons, logos, and interfaces quite a bit.

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I declare this week Texture Week on Vectips! No reason,  I’ve just been working with a number of textures in some recent illustrations, and wanted to pass along some of the techniques.  It is starting to warm up oustide, so it is only fitting I start with wading water, like in a pool. It is a relatively quick and easy technique using Illustrator’s Effects, Simplify, Offset Path and some bright colors.

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I like illustrating characters, icons, and other highly representative illustrations. I do this kind of work the majority of time in Illustrator,  so it’s nice to break out and create abstract backgrounds. Abstract backgrounds are easy to create in Illustrator with a couple of simple techniques. Using Gradient Meshes, Steps Blends and Opacity Masks you can quickly create an abstract background.

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