Put Your Hand Drawn Images Into Illustrator

Ever wanted to take a drawing from paper into Illustrator?

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Draw Your Image

First thing you need to do is to draw an image!

Here we just have a drawing of a cat.

When you are drawing your image you need to make sure that there are no gaps in the lines.

Otherwise there will be gaps when you turn it into a vector.

Make sure not to put any shading in otherwise illustrator will just turn it into a solid colour.

You should use pencil or pen!

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Once you have drawn your image and you are happy you need to import it!

To do this you need to use a scanner.

Looking for more Illustrator tips? Read our guide here on The Gradient Mesh Tool.

Scan The Image In

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Now you need to open illustrator and open the scanned image.

To do this go to:

File, open and then find your image in your folders and then click open.

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And just like that you will see the image in your Illustrator.

However you will notice you cannot edit it as you wish. Keep reading to solve this!

For a comprehensive and personal guide, view our Illustrator courses.

Make The Image A Vector

Now you have the scanned image in illustrator you need to turn it into a vector.

To do this you need to go to “Object”, then down to “Image Trace” and click on “Make and expand”.

A window will pop up so click ok.

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Now you’re finished and you will have a vector image of your drawing.

You can manipulate this like any other vector in illustrator.

For example, you could change the colour, see example below!

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Want to learn how to make 3D letters without using the 3D tool in Adobe Illustrator?

 

About Ben Richardson

Ben is a director of Acuity Training which he has been running for over 10 years.


He is a Natural Sciences graduate from the University of Cambridge and a qualified accountant with the ICAEW.


He previously worked as a venture capitalist and banker and so had extensive experience with Excel from building financial models before moving to learn SQL, Microsoft Power BI and other technologies more recently.