Whether you create for the scrapbook and craft industry, print or web design, Adobe Illustrator is an essential tool for digital artists.

In this beginning self-paced workshop, Laura Coyle presents clear steps that build your knowledge from lesson to lesson. You’ll learn while working on projects with immediately useful techniques and emerge from class with artwork you can use in your own designs.

This 5.5 hour workshop is broken into 4 modules, each containing a series of video lessons. We start from the very beginning to give newcomers a thorough orientation. For those who are already working in Illustrator, Laura introduces many useful shortcuts, methods and tips to strengthen your understanding of this powerful software.

Beginning Illustrator is an updated version of Laura’s Step-by-Step Design with Illustrator class. Beginning Illustrator contains about 70% of the original Step-by-Step class content. 30% of the content is made up of new lessons and designs. Former Step-by-Step students can purchase access to the new class at a special upgrade price.

Have questions? Send them to Laura at laurac@reneepearson.com.

As a self-paced student, you will receive immediate access to all of the lessons as soon as you register. Class content is presented via streaming video you can watch at your leisure. Lesson videos are also viewable on iPhone and iPad devices.

A printable PDF lesson guide, exercise files and a bonus vector art kit are also included and available for download.

Once registered, you can visit the class forum and gallery, post questions, display your work and interact with Laura and fellow students.

Beginning Illustrator introduces the drawing tools in Adobe Illustrator: the shape tools, pen tool, pencil and brush. Essential Illustrator workflow concepts like artboards, stacking, grouping, aligning, layers and color swatches are covered. We work step by step creating design elements that employ the Pathfinder, Shape Builder and other tools. We’ll work with typography, outline type, the glyphs panel and methods for editing existing vector art. You’ll also learn how to export artwork in JPEG and PNG format and prepare your designs for use in the Photoshop & PS Elements workspace.

What to Expect
Below is a full workshop syllabus outlining lesson topics.

Lessons are taught in Adobe Illustrator CS5 and CS4. Differences between the versions are highlighted along the way. This class also includes information and compatible files for CS3 and CS2 users. A free 30-day trial version of Adobe Illustrator CS5 is available at adobe.com.

A pen tablet will be helpful for working on the Pencil and Brush lessons, but not required.

You will need Adobe Photoshop or Elements, and your own photos to work with the file we complete in the final lesson of class.