Creating Painted Effects with illustrator 7.0

by: Carla Ballatan

Newer versions of the software program Illustrator gave us useful features to dig in. Still, no matter how happy we are about the new features, time after time, in the process of making our designs more creative and innovative, we turn on old tricks of the program. Creating painted effects using Illustrator is an old trick. Now and again, you’ll find this trick useful.

So, we give you some tips and directions on creating your very own painted image with Illustrator. If some of you have newer or older versions than the Illustrator version 7.0, you might find that some paths in the directions here have been slightly altered. So here we go…

First, type out a letter of your choice, let’s say a letter E, and create some polygon shapes to fit behind it. Try out small squares for the letter E and make sure the shapes would fit behind the letter. To send out the four squares at the back of the letter E, select the squares with your “black arrow” selection tool and click OBJECT-ARRANGE-SEND TO BACK and voila! You have now four boxes behind your letter E.

Then, select the letter E and create outlines for it by clicking TYPE-CREATE OUTLINES. To change the shapes into compound paths, Select CTRL-A and then OBJECT-PATHFINDER-DIVIDE. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. The CTRL Z command will take you back to every step you took.

Now, it’s time to select parts of your shape, change its colors and pull the individual shapes apart from one another. You can do all of this by using direct-selection tool. After pulling the shapes apart, rotate some slightly by selecting your rotate tool. After doing that, add some effects that would make the shape’s paths slightly roughened. Choose FILTER-DISTORT-ROUGHEN to create this effect.

Not satisfied, yet? Use your TWIRL tool and twirl the shapes around. Ooops…no twirl tool on your old Illustrator version? Try using FILTER, then. Twirl the shapes around as much to your satisfaction, but make sure it’s still recognizable and readable especially if you’re using text. Want to see the shapes without the selected paths? Hit CTRL H and be gone with the blue select marks, though the paths are still selected. To make the blue select marks reappear, hit CTRL H again!

Finally, use OBJECT-PATHFINDER-SOFT- with a value of 100%, to blend the colors and give you the painterly effect. It’s best to select an appropriate color format, aside from the default CMYK. You may see a rasterized image by selecting OBJECT-RASTERIZE.

A word of caution, though, go back one step by hitting CTRL Z since once you saved the image rasterized and closed, you won’t be able to edit it anymore. You can also copy/paste your creation into a new document inside the Photoshop and if you need to print from Illustrator for spot colors, select Split Along Path option in the Document Set Up, first. Keep on painting!