ILL 142: Illustrator II
Round out your Illustrator skills in challenging projects
Adobe Illustrator puts any conceivable vector art objective at your fingertips. But most digital designers only scratch the surface of Illustrator. To make a splash, one must delve deeper. In this advanced online Illustrator course, you'll create photo-realistic illustrations, complex patterns, rich designs, and learn how to accelerate your efforts with helpful workflow features. Working with an expert instructor, build on your existing Illustrator skills and tackle high-end projects with depth, dimension, and wow-power.
Student work by Nico Hicks. Visit the Student Gallery.
About This Course
Project-Based Learning
Expand your Illustrator skills with projects that include photorealism, product design, product packaging, map design, invitation design, and event promotion.
What Skills Will I Develop?
Students in this course can expect to learn to:
- Use basic selection tools and edge refinement to isolate and edit parts of an image.
- Manipulate layers through ordering, positioning, scaling, rotation, and adjustments.
- Create composite images that demonstrate advanced selection and layering techniques.
- Prepare images for Web and print output with appropriate sizing and resolution.
- Apply painted masks, selection-based masks, gradient masks, and blend modes to create sophisticated image effects.
- Construct adjustment layers for editable, non-destructive changes to image coloration and exposure.
- Set and modify typography using the full range of type tools, the Character panel, and the Paragraph panel.
- Make use of special effects to typography using masks, paths, and layer styles.
- Experiment with preset brushes and custom brushes to colorize images, enhance images, and build illustrations.
- Stylize images by combining filters with blending and masks.
- Evaluate and correct image imperfections using the Info panel, adjustment layers, and retouching tools.
- Combine Photoshop and Adobe Bridge to build an overall professional workflow with effective digital asset management.
What Software and Supplies Do I Need?
- Computer with Internet connection.
- Adobe Illustrator CC.
- Adobe Photoshop or equivalent program.
- Basic experience in the above software.
Course Outline
Working with Color
There's more to color in Illustrator than the fill and stroke boxes. In this first week you'll pick up techniques for sampling colors and using swatch libraries, and learn to develop color schemes with Recolor Artwork. You'll blend colors with gradients, the Blend tool, and the Mesh tool, adding more dimension and even realism to your work, and wrap up with a look at adjusting color through special color commands.
Transparency
Sophisticated transparency techniques can make your work more multi-faceted and intriguing. This session covers techniques such as opacity masks and knockout groups, along with a detailed look at each of Illustrator's blend modes. Finally, you'll see how transparency features can be handled by your printer for accurate output.
Effects and Shape Transformations
A piece of vector art can become a sophisticated 3D object with the techniques that we'll explore in this week's class. You'll also take a thorough look at blends and effects that can randomly or precisely re-shape your Illustrator designs and amaze your viewers.
Masks, Compound Paths, Styles, and Perspective Drawing
This session tackles more ways to speed your workflow, as well as an important method for masking or framing artwork. This method is the clipping mask, key to encasing artwork within other shapes. The Graphic Styles and Appearance panels are explored, giving you greater control over the appearance of any object.
Live Paint, Brushes, & Symbols
Illustrator helps you streamline your workflow by providing the ability to customize features and quickly reuse repetitive designs or objects. This week, you'll look at complex brush techniques including art and scatter brushes that can "paint" with your own designs. Next, you will discover how Illustrator allows you to create patterns with precision and ease. You'll explore symbols, an indispensable feature enabling you to reuse common elements.
Image Tracing & Creating Patterns
Adobe Illustrator makes it easy to work with other common design programs like Photoshop when taking a raster image and converting it to a vector image using Image Trace. This final lecture explores how to edit traced images and apply them into overall designs. You will also learn how to create seamless patterns using multiple images and repeating patterns from simple shapes.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How Do The Courses Work?
Our courses are project-based and instructor-led. In each course you’ll complete a series of lectures, projects, discussions, and critiques designed to stretch your creative skills. Weekly assignment deadlines keep you on track, and with no set-logins or Zoom meetings, you can build your studies around your schedule.
Who Are The Instructors?
Our courses are developed and taught by our industry-leading faculty of creative professionals. This means that you’ll learn in-demand skills, get feedback on your work, and build a portfolio of creative work. View our Student Gallery for featured student projects.
When Can I Start?
Classes start January, April, and August, and this course is completed in a 15-week term. College credit from this course can be applied to a range of Degree and Certificate programs at Sessions College. You can enroll in this course on an individual basis or as part of a program.
Explore our Programs: Bachelor's Degree | Associate Degree | Undergraduate Certificate
How Do I Register?
To register for a program, complete our program application. To register for this course on an individual basis, please contact our admissions team at admissions@sessions.edu. An Admissions Advisor will contact you to setup your enrollment.
| Course Tuition and Fees | |
|---|---|
| Tuition | $510/credit |
| Registration Fee* | $200 |
| Total Course Price | $1730 |
Registration fees are nonrefundable after 5 days from enrollment.
Is Sessions College accredited?
Yes. Since 2001, Sessions College has been accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC). The Distance Education Accrediting Commission is listed by the U.S. Department of Education as a recognized accrediting agency and is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA).