Illustrator: The Basics for I363/I590

Short link to this page: https://go.iu.edu/8vyw

Learn the basics of Adobe Illustrator in this training. We'll explore basic skills like working with color, creating and combining shapes, and using gradients. We'll create a basic landscape drawing as part of today's session, and during the process we'll learn concepts important to creating artwork in Illustrator, such as working with paths and anchor points, using the Pen tool, and more.

While you're waiting for today's session to start:

Download the excercise files in the following section and extract them to the desktop on your computer. (Need help with this? Read the instructions for downloading and extracting exercise files on the page Getting Started with Exercise Files.)
Open Illustrator on your computer.

Exercise files for today's session

Download exercise files

Illustrator: The Basics for I363/I590 Contents

Expand the accordion folds to see a detailed description of the content.

Explore the contents of Illustrator: The Basics for I363/I590:

Explore the Illustrator interface and learn about how best to set up Illustrator for efficient graphic design.

See the full content for Introducing Adobe Illustrator.

Work with the shape tools to begin creating a landscape drawing.

See the full content for Using the Shape tools.

Learn how to use the Selection tool to manipulate shapes on the artboard.

See the full content for Using the Selection tool to alter objects.

Learn how to use the Selection tool to manipulate shapes on the artboard.

See the full content for Using the Selection tool to alter objects.

Explore how to combine multiple separate shapes into one shape using the Pathfinder panel.

See the full content for Uniting objects using the Pathfinder panel.

Learn the basics of using the Pen tool to create straight and curved lines.

See the full content for Using the Pen tool.

In this section, we'll finish making the boat we've been working on by creating a few more shapes and grouping them together into one boat object.

See the full content for Grouping shapes to make a complex object.

Add effects to a shape and create a gradient, as well as learn how to arrange objects on the artboard.

See the full content for Adding effects and gradients to shapes.

All UITS IT Training course content is available for reuse via Creative Commons licensing (CC BY-NC-SA).

Back to Illustrator: The Basics for I363/I590 Contents

Finishing the rest of Illustrator: The Basics

The content we covered in today's session is only the first half of the course Illustrator: The Basics – the rest of the content is available on Canvas. To complete the course, you'll need to sign up for the course through IU Expand, then start on the page Creating a simple logo using shapes and the Pathfinder panel.

Enroll in Illustrator: The Basics on IU Expand

After completing the course and earning the certificate, you'll need to download the certificate and upload it to the IT Training - Illustrator: The Basics assignment in Canvas. Following are instructions for where to find and how to download your certificate.

From inside the course: The End of Course page for both courses includes a link to access the certificate for the course, under the heading "Course completion certificate" - clicking the link will load a PDF of your certificate in a new tab (it may take a little bit of time for it to load). From here, you can download the certificate by clicking on the download button in the in-browser PDF viewer.

From IU Expand: You can access your certificate at any time from IU Expand by viewing your completed courses on the Student Dashboard (located at https://expand.iu.edu/dashboard/completed ) - the following screenshot shows what you should look for in your completed courses and I've highlighted the part where it shows there's a certificate available for download:

Screenshot of IU Expand dashboard, highlighting the link under the completed course listing where you can download your certificate.

From there, you can either view or download a PDF version of your certificate.