How to Create an Eagle Head Sticker

Step 1

I went over to stock.xchng and picked a nice photograph of an eagle. We'll use this image and trace our eagle head out of it. Open a new document in Illustrator and place the image on its own layer and lock it.

Step 2

There is no real shortcut for this kind of thing, just plain and simple tracing. Select the Pen Tool (P) and start tracing the outline of the eagle head. Fill the shape with white and set the Stroke to none.

Step 3

Start adding another shape by loosely tracing it following the out line of the first shape. Fill it with 10% black.

Step 4

Add another shape. Just keep looking at the reference image, trace it, and fill it with 20% black. You can let your imagination run. It doesn't have to have the exact shape of the eagle head.

Step 5

We pretty much keep adding shapes and filling them with gradients and colors similar to the photo.

Step 6

All these shapes will make up the head and feathers. The most important thing is to distinguish the shapes from each other by placing them underneath or above each other and give them slightly different colors or gradients. Try to orient yourself on the colors of the photo.

Step 7

Let's move on to the eye. Create a small circle with the Ellipse Tool (L) and fill it with a white/orange radial gradient.

Step 8

Then create two circles filled with orange. Make one circle smaller that the other. Fill the bigger one with a slightly darker orange and then select both and apply a blend (Command + Alt + B). Set the Blend option to Specified Steps of 10.

Step 9

Create another circle on top and fill it with black.

Step 10

For the eye detail, create a triangle shape with the Pen Tool (P) and fill it with a radial gradient.

Step 11

Select the Rotate Tool (R), and with the object selected, click on the bottom tip of the triangle shape. Then hold Alt and drag the shape to the right (clockwise). This will duplicate it. Then press Command + D over and over again until you have a full circle of shapes. Now group them together.

Step 12

Place the grouped shapes over the black circle.

Step 13

Create another smaller black circle on top. This will act as a pupil.

Step 14

Last but not least, place two different shaped white circles as highlights on top of the black circle.

Step 15

Let's move on to the beak. Create a small sickle shape with the Pen Tool (P) along the beak in the image and fill it with an orange color.

Step 16

Keep looking at the image and create shapes to build up the bird beak.

Step 17

Pay attention to the different shades of orange. The top beak shape should be lighter than the bottom half.

Step 18

Create a small ellipse as the nose.

Step 19

Copy the nose ellipse (Command + C + F) on top and scale it down a bit. (E). Then add a linear gradient.

Step 20

Create a wiggly line with the Pencil Tool (N) and choose an orange color.

Step 21

Add more detail to the beak. Have a look at the photo to orient yourself. Sometimes it just takes a small detail to make all the difference.

Step 22

In case you need to change the shape of small detail objects, grab the Direct Selection Tool (A) and transform it.

Step 23

This is the eagle illustration. As you can see, we really didn't need all that many shapes. The important thing to remember is that it all comes down to shading and highlights.

Step 24

We want to make this into a sticker. Select all of the shapes and make a copy. Then apply the Unite option in the Pathfinder Palette.

Step 25

Select the shape again and apply an Offset Path of 7pt. Make sure you choose the "Round" option for the joins.

Step 26

In case there are shapes not added, select them with the Direct Selection Tool (A) and delete them.

Step 27

Select the Offset shape (you might want to ungroup everything) and fill it with black. As you can see, this shape acts like a rounded stroke around the eagle head.

Step 28

I added a start burst and placed it behind the eagle head. To make it fit into the sticker shape, copy the united shape from Step 25 and place it on top of the star burst. Then select the start burst and the shape and apply a Clipping Mask (Command + 7).

Final

I transformed the sticker shape a little. You can create any sticker you'd like, round rectangle, following the eagle head shape or an ellipse. It's all up to you. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

How to Create a Vector Goldfish in Six Steps

Below is the final image we will be working towards.

Step 1

Draw the goldfish and scan the drawing. Now open Adobe Illustrator and create a new document (Command + N) at 600 px by 600 px. Insert an image in the document by going to File > Place, then Lock the layer with the scanned image of the goldfish drawing.

Step 2

Make a new layer on top. Start by tracing the outline of the goldfish using the Pen Tool (P). For comfort of work we'll place different elements in separate layers. Pay attention that the tail of the fish consists of two paths.

Step 3

In this step we'll paint the body of fish using the Mesh Tool.

In order that to get a beautiful Mesh under the path of the fish, first create a rectangle (Rectangle Tool (M)) with an orange (C=0; M=87; Y=100; K=0) fill and without stroke. Select the rectangle and path of the fish, then make Clipping Mask (picture 3a).

Before we move farther, I urgently recommend you lock all layers you aren't currently working with so that nothing gets inadvertently moved. In picture 3b all layers except for a rectangle are noted as locked. We'll make this rectangle into a Mesh shortly.

picture 3a

picture 3b

Create the specks of light on the body of the fish. Add a point to the mesh by using the Mesh Tool (U) and clicking anywhere in the shape's area (picture 3c). After converting a shape into a mesh, you can select points with three tools: Mesh Tool, Direct Selection Tool, and the Lasso Tool.

All you have to do now is to add color to the mesh by selecting a color from the swatches palette. I took colors from the Swatch library > Metal. Get creative with color in this stage to get an excellent result.

picture 3c

Step 4

Now we'll create an eye, gill and mouth of the fish. The eye consists of five ellipses located one over another, below the biggest and further in each ellipse decreases in size. The ellipses are filled in by various kinds of gradient and solid colors as shown below. The mouth and gill is filled in by a linear gradient.

Step 5

Now we'll work on the fins. Fill them in with a linear gradient and Opacity of 70% (picture 5a). Let's place lines in the fins. Create a brush by first using the Ellipse Tool (L) to make a circle 3px by 3px in any color and without stroke. Drag the right anchor point to the right by means of the Direct Selection Tool (A), while holding Shift to constrain. Convert the selected anchor point to a corner (picture 5b). Transfer the created shape to the Brushes palette and select New Art Brush. Along the edges of a fin drawn two curves (Pen Tool (P) and apply to them the just created brush.

Select both curves and make a Blend, by going to Object > Blend > Blend Options Spacing: specified Steps set to 16, then Object > Blend > Make (Alt + Command + B) (picture 5c). Make Object > Blend > Expand and ungroup our curves. Now let's correct the bottom ends of the fin edges (picture 5d). Correct this using the Direct Selection Tool (A), moving the bottom anchor points.

Now select all the curves and go to Object > Expand Appearance, Object > Path > Clean Up. Now fill it in with a linear gradient, Opacity set to 70% (picture 5e). Use a similar workflow to make our other fins.

picture 5a

picture 5b

picture 5c

picture 5d

picture 5e

Step 6

Now let's create the scales. Make a new layer on top. Open our Symbols palette, in the library search for Artistic Textures and select Stipple large. Grab the Symbol Sprayer Tool (Shift + S), spray a texture (in our case we'll be 5-6 clicks will be enough).

Take the tool Symbol Stainer Tool from the Symbol Sprayer Tool submenu, choose a color and paint a texture (picture 6a). Now use the excellent Symbol Screener Tool,select the texture, and very quietly in the corners we'll click with this tool.

In the middle the texture has turned out non-transparent and along the edges it is hardly visible. Now change the blending mode of the texture we just put on the fish to Lighten and Opacity to 60% (picture 6b). Copy the texture, change blending mode to Color Dodge, set the Opacity to 100% and slightly rotate it (picture 6c).

picture 6a

picture 6b

picture 6c

Conclusion

The goldfish is ready! Have fun using these techniques to make a whole school of vector fish!