Tracing Hastily in Illustrator

Tracing pixel-based images is one of the most common uses of Illustrator. By using a digital image as a guide and taking full advantage of the Layers palette and its arcane powers, you can create decent artwork with great ease. Just follow these steps:

1. Open a new Illustrator document.

2. Choose File➪Place and select a pixel-based image.
Almost any image will do. Its visual resolution can be low (you don’t need anything higher than 72 pixels per inch, or ppi), out of focus, dirty, scratchy, or otherwise funky. Remember, the image is just a guide — you won’t be printing it. As long as you can tell what the image is, that’s good enough.

3. In the Place dialog box, select the Template check box.
Don’t worry about linking the original image; it’s destined for deletion after you trace it (insert villainous laugh here).

4. Click OK.
The image appears in a Template layer, locked out and faded by 50 percent.

5. If your Layers palette isn’t already open, choose Window➪Layers.
Double-click the layer above the Template layer.
The Layer Options dialog box appears, enabling you to give the layer a name. For this example, name it Pencil Sketch and click OK.

6. Double-click the Pencil tool to open the Pencil Tool Preferences dialog box and then clear the Edit Selected Paths option.
Whenever you trace, you probably want to draw a lot of pencil lines close together. By clearing the Edit Selected Paths option, you make this task a lot easier because you won’t be replacing your last line with the next line that you draw.

7. Change the Fill and Stroke color and the Stroke width to make seeing the lines you draw easier.
With the Pencil tool still selected, set the Fill color to None and the Stroke color to Black by using the Color palette. Set the stroke weight to 1 pt in the Stroke palette. By changing the Fill and Stroke before you start drawing, you ensure that each line has those Fill and Stroke values.

8. Using the image in the Template layer as a guide, trace the image in as much detail as you want.

You can add color to your graphic by using the paths that you just created. The catch is that when you trace with the Pencil tool, the tendency is to make a whole lot of short, unconnected open path segments. They look great as lines, but when you try to fill them correctly with color, doing so is virtually impossible because you need long, closed paths. Fortunately, you can easily join the separate open path segments into closed paths. To make the graphic as editable as possible, create color in one layer and keep your original pencil sketch safely hidden in a different layer. The next step shows how.

9. Duplicate the Pencil Sketch layer.
In the Layers palette, drag the pencil sketch layer onto the Create New Layer button. This action creates a new layer with the same contents as the Pencil Sketch layer.

10. To avoid confusion, name the duplicate layer. Double-clicking this new layer opens the Layer Options dialog box, in which you name this layer Color; then click OK.

11. Click the View button in the Layers palette (the eye icon to the left of the layer name) for the Pencil Sketch layer to hide it.
Hiding the Pencil Sketch layer enables you to focus on coloring the image. After you hide the Pencil Sketch layer, you join your various lines to create closed paths around all the major shapes in the artwork. You then fill those paths with color later on.

12. Unite separate path segments into closed paths by using the Join command.
To use the Join command, select two points in separate paths by using the Direct Selection tool and then choose Object➪Path➪Join. This command unites the endpoints of two separate paths into a single point. In this example (or for any image of a face), you can join the hair into one closed path, the face into another, the lips into another, and so on. You may need to add extra lines by using the Pencil tool in order to make your creation work, but you can close the majority of your paths with the Join command. Unfortunately, this command works on only two points at a time, so you need to repeat the Join command several times to create each closed path.

To make sure it holds its color properly, choose a Fill color at any time to test your path.

13. After you create your closed paths, fill them with color by using the Swatches palette or the Color palette.

14. Delete the Template layer.
In the Layers palette, click the Template layer. Drag it onto the Trash Can icon in the lower-right corner of the Layers palette. This removes the image you were tracing from the Illustrator document, reducing file size and giving you an unobscured vision of your artwork.

15. View and position the Pencil Sketch layer.
In the Layers palette, click the View button for the Pencil Sketch layer. Click and drag the Pencil Sketch layer above the Color layer. When a dark bar appears above the Color layer, release the mouse button. The pencil sketch is positioned over the colors. The illustration is now 98 percent done. You may need to make a few minor tweaks, but because your pencil sketch and the colors are in separate layers, you can quickly and easily target the areas to change by hiding or locking layers. The final illustration, shown in Figure 2-10, may not be absolutely perfect, but it took about 15 minutes to create! With a little practice, patience, and perseverance, you can create illustrations that put this one to shame!