Welcome to One-on-One

- Hello, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Illustrator One-on-One Intermediate, part two in a series of four video courses devoted to your ultimate mastery of the world's most powerful vector-based drawing software. One-on-One is all about project based learning. You'll experience Illustrator by rolling up your sleeves and creating compelling projects for yourself. That way, you'll be better prepared to create your own projects in the future.

In this course, I'll show you how to assign strokes to your path outlines, complete with dashes, custom arrowheads, and variable line weights. We'll explore how to modify gradients directly inside of path outlines, as well as apply gradients to a stroke. You'll see how to create seamlessly repeating tile patterns using the pattern generator, which is a dream to work with. You'll learn how to combine simple shapes to create more complex ones using pathfinder operations.

You'll see how to create interlocking paths using the amazing Live Paint feature. And I'll show you how to place and modify photographic images. The result is a contextualized learning program. Illustrator's features make sense because you apply them, sometimes independently, other times in concert, to a clearly defined task. And you leave each chapter with a sense of accomplishment. I really hope there are moments where you feel, I rule, I did this, and I can do more.

One last item. As you know, Illustrator is now part of the Creative Cloud, which makes it a fluid application that may update to any extent, at any time. And just as Illustrator is fluid, so is this course. Check back every so often, because I'll be updating and adding movies whenever they need attention. In any given movie, you may see the occasional command or widget on your screen, that doesn't appear on mine. But, rest assured, everything I'll be showing you, works as advertised.

Now, without further ado, let's get to work.