There are many ways to illustrate and be creative even if you can’t draw so well. If you’ve got an imagination and some Photoshop skills, then you can create illustrations that are bang on trend.

I’ll take you through the necessary steps to get you on your way to creating artworks of your own. The aim of this tutorial though, is not to teach you how to rip off the style, but to show you how to create illustrations without needing to outdraw Da Vinvi. The hope is that you’ll follow and use these techniques to work within your own style!

Final Image Preview

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Tutorial Details

• Program: Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Difficulty: Intermediate
• Estimated Completion Time: 1-2 hours

Video Tutorial

Our video editor Gavin Steele has created this video tutorial to compliment this text + image tutorial.

Assets

Here are the assets you’ll need for this tutorial:

• Dinosaur
• Fish
• Red Car
• Paper Texture

Step 1

Create a new canvas. For all the settings outlined in the tutorial to be accurate you should create a canvas at 300dpi and at roughly the same size.

Step 2

Open the Dinosaur image and drag it into your working document. Use the Free Transform Tool to resize (holding the Shift key will constrain the aspect ratio) the Dinosaur image to about 150% of its original size. Then go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal. Then desaturate the image by going to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

Step 3

Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool and roughly draw around the Dinosaurs head. Copy the head and then press delete with the selection still active so it removes the head from the Dinosaur layer. Paste the head and use the Free Transform Tool to rotate the head -22 degrees and resize to 135%. Use the Eraser Tool to remove any areas where the background overlaps the Dinosaur layer.

Select both layers in the Layers Palette and merge them (Layer > Merge Layers). Rename the layer “DINOSAUR.” At this point it’s worth mentioning that I deleted most of the background on “DINOSAUR” using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, but you don’t have to do a particularly good job.

Step 4

Drop the “DINOSAUR” layer Opacity down to 50%. Then select the Pen Tool and set it to Shape Layers in the Options bar (Window > Options will bring it up if it’s not already visible). Select any color at this stage and start to draw a smooth shape around the head. Once you’ve plotted your first couple of points, go to the Layers Palette and drop the Fill value to 0% so that you can see the underlying layer.

Some of the Anchor Points require splitting, which enables moving the Point Handles independently of each other. To do this, draw the point and then hold the Alt key whilst clicking the point with the Pen Tool and drawing out from it.
Once you’ve closed the Path, put the Fill back up to 100% and rename the layer “DINO_HEAD.”

Step 5

Use the Pen Tool (set to Shape Layers) to draw in the rest of the limbs minus the tail. Simplify the shapes of things and be creative while doing this. I elongated the fingers for example. (editor：photoshop1)