“With simple shapes and gradients, this easy tutorial will show you how to create an alarm clock icon. We’ll be using Illustrator CS4 for this tutorial, but those of you with older version should be able to follow along as well. Let’s jump into this tutorial, which beginning illustrators will find especially useful!”

Vector Illustration: 60+ Illustrator Tutorials, Tips and Best Practices

Adobe Illustrator is a powerful tool for illustrating various elements one can use for web pages and print design. However, it’s important to know what to do in order to powerfully use its tools and achieve certain effects. So, step-by-step tutorials can provide a lot of help, thats why we spent a lot of time searching for the best tutorials out there and the result was 60 remarkable illustrator tutorials, tips, best practices from some of the best illustrators and artists; besides you’ll also find references to brilliant illustrator portfolios out there. Let’s take a look at some of the best Adobe Illustrator tutorials we’ve found in the Web so far.

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• deviantART: 30+ Breathtaking Artworks
• Masters of Graphic Design and Illustration: 25+ Interviews

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Tutorials

1-From Sketch to Vector Illustration- A technique of vector illustrating that takes a little bit more skill is starting with a hand drawn sketches.This tutorial will focus on that technique of vector illustrating.

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2-Craft a Dramatic Vector Landscape Environment- This tutorial will show the intermediate Adobe Illustrator artist how to make a dramatic landscape environment.

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3-Draw Your Self Portrait- Learn how to transform your photo into your vector self portrait. You’ll review techniques for tracing photos.

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4-Complex Circular Design Techniques- This tutorial is split into 2 sections: The Rotate Tool, and a Custom Pattern Brush.

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5-Creating trees in Illustrator- Green is in vogue and clients everywhere want natural imagery in their promotional material. Ben the Illustrator shows you how to create a fresh-looking tree.

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6-Illustrator Tutorial: Figure Shading-
Drawing the human body is never easy, but shading it and giving it depth as well can be a real headache. A nice tutorial on figure shading by Russell Tate.

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7-Texture- When working in Illustrator it’s nice to add textures that weren’t computer generated (like gradients or pattern fills). This is a step-by-step instructions on how you can create your own hand-made texture effects using a Chinagraph Pencil on simple Watercolor Paper.

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8-Realistic Curtain- How to create a realistic curtain using the gradient mesh.

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9-Wood Grain- Here is a quick way to create wood grain effect using the warp tools in illustrator.

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10-Simple organic shapes the Illustrator way- Here is a nice way to create wood grain effect using the warp tools in illustrator.

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11-Free Watercolor Brushes and Tutorial- How to create a couple watercolor brushes, and at the end of the tutorial you can download some Free Vectips Watercolor Brushes!

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12-3D Logo Tutorial- In this Tutorial you will start with the making of a logo shape, going to rough 3D, and finishing it in Photoshop.

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13-How To Create Your Own Vector Cartoon Character- Follow this tutorial to create your own vector character; Freddy the Fish.

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14-Vector Polishing Techniques- This tutorial includes 9 Photoshop techniques that will show you how to add more depth, color, contrast, and texture into your vector art.

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15-Chinese Bamboo- This tutorial will show you how to illustrate Chinese bamboo with Illustrator Symbol Sprayer and Mesh Tool.

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16-ILLUSTRATE IMAGE INTO VECTOR- Basically, it is quite simple to illustrate an animate rather than a real object. Its color tone is simple and easy to apply. Yhis tutorial will teach you how to illustrate an image into vector.

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17-Digital Art Tutorial - An old tutorial but worth every minute you spend on it.

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18-Creating a Crazy Cool Logo

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19-Create a Designer Font- How to break apart a font into vector bits that we can manipulate. This is a great way to add your style to a font or to make your own!

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20-Swirl Mania in Illustrator and Photoshop- There are lots of ways to create swirls in Illustrator, in this tutorial you will learn 4 ways to create swirls, and by mixing them you will learn some very powerful techniques that will allow you to easily make tons of different styles of swirls and crazy sperm vectors.