Importing a rough sketch

- [Instructor] You shouldn't just jump into Illustrator and try and draw things just with the software. The best things start on pens and paper or in one of the mobile apps that sketch things out first, because it gives you a chance to work out what it is you want to do, and develop it, and then you can bring it in and then use the machine to assist you with the drawing. Okay, it should always be that way around, rather than the machine pulling you along with it. So we've got a sketch prepared, and I've got a new document here, open.

So what we're going to do is create a new document for you, as well. So if you do Command + N, Ctrl +N, or go to the File menu and choose New. I went to the Art and Illustration profile, and actually chose 960 by 560 just here. You don't need to do that. You could use any one of these sizes, really, because it's not desperately relevant for the logo. In fact, the graphics, of course, scale perfectly, unlike Photoshop images. But if you do that, I'm just going to close out of mine, because I have one already.

And then when your document is ready, we'll place the sketch into it. So do Shift + Command + P, Shift + Control + P, or go to the File menu and choose Place. And in the Exercise Files for chapter six, there's a psd file with the sketches inside of it. So if I just bring that in. And then come along here and click and drag to drop that onto my artboard like so. So you should be able to drag that into place with your selection tool.

If you don't have the selection tool active, just tap V on your keyboard, and it will pick it up. I'm going to center that up pretty much like that. And then what I'm going to do is lock this layer and actually turn it into a tracing template. We lock it because just like working with things in the real world, you don't want the tracing paper to move while you're tracing, because then you've got to try and line it all up again and it's never really that successful, is it? So over to the Layers panel, and here is Layer 1.

We could rename that in a second. I want you to just double click in this empty area here. Don't double click on the name or anywhere else, because you'll change something, typically the name or the way that this responds. So double click here. This is the Layer Options. And what we're going to do with this is we're going to change the name here. So let's just call this sketchwork, just there like so. And we're going to turn it into a Template layer. And that will dim any images on it to 50%.

Because there's some thin, sketchy stuff on here, that should all pretty much disappear, and we'll just end up with the stuff that we actually do want. So that's perfectly fine. If it's ever a bit weak, just come back into it and change this value to get exactly what you want. Hit OK, and that's done. The layer gets locked automatically. And then just add a layer by clicking this icon at the bottom of the panel. Okay, so our new layer is just here. If you wanted to rename it Drawing or something like that, then just double click on the name, rename it and hit Return to apply it.

Okay, I'm going to close down the layers panel just there, because it's just in the way otherwise. And this is the thing that we're going to be redrawing. And I'm going to zoom in on that. So I'm going to tap the Z key on my keyboard. And my GPU acceleration, at the moment, due to a problem with the operating system, is actually turned off. And you can see this little rocket here in the application bar has this power sign next to it because I've turned it off. If yours is still on, all you need to do is go to the middle-ish of this shape, mouse down and drag outwards slowly.

And you'll see that you're zoomed in quite quickly. For the rest of us, just come up maybe just out to the top here, mouse down, and drag a marquee around the logo like so. And then release, okay, and you're zoomed in. If you needed to reset your zoom, or do anything else, you'll find all of the commands for that in this section, okay, of the View menu. So we're pretty much ready to go. And I'm just going to hold down the Spacebar here and pan across lightly for my own viewing comfort, actually, I wanted to see that more in line with the way I'm sat.

I'm then going to tap V on my keyboard. Okay, that gets me the selection tool. That way I'm not going to accidentally start zooming. And I need the document rulers. So to do that in the latest versions of Illustrator, you just come across to the properties panel and click on the ruler here, if nothing else is selected, of course. Otherwise, you can go up to the View menu and find Rulers, or use the shortcut Command + R, Control + R, to turn them on and off.

Take your cursor into the ruler at the top, mouse down and drag down until you are in about the middle of that flower, and then release at that point and your fist guide is added. Go back up to the rulers at the top. Mouse down and drag down again, but before you get to the middle, hold down the Alt or Option key and it will switch to the alternate direction. And then just line that up like so, and release at that particular point, excellent. So we've got some guides there.

We can turn the rulers off, if we want, either by clicking the icon or using the shortcut again, or leave them, if you like, and we're pretty much ready to draw. Just one other thing before we do that, and that's to set up ready for it. Tap D on your keyboard, and that sets the default properties for drawn objects in Illustrator, which is to have a white fill and a black stroke. I just want to change the fill here to None, because that way we'll be able to see what we're doing with the lines being there, and the fill won't be obscuring our view of the underlying sketch.

In the next movie, we'll actually start drawing.