Monica Rysavy

I’ve discovered Pattern Maker in Adobe Illustrator CS6 and I’m obsessed.

I started with my favorite chevron design…

And moved on to Stripes!

I plan to change up some of the designs in the Monica Rysavy Designs Etsy Shop soon with these new designs!

Question for you…

What colors would you like to see put together with a chevron or stripe pattern? 

Let me know in the comments!

I’ve wanted to learn Adobe Illustrator for a really long time! I’ve poked around in it for the last year or so, working with commercial vector art and creating basic patterns for my shop (Monica Rysavy Designs on Etsy), but while I feel totally comfortable with Photoshop and can do exactly what I want to do quickly, Illustrator has been another story. I often felt like I was making things more difficult than they needed to be simply because I wasn’t sure how to do things the right way.

So, I decided to take a class! (If you’ve read my “About” page, I bet you saw that one coming!) I looked up various online courses to help me learn Illustrator and I decided to go with Laura Coyle’s series, Adobe Illustrator Essentials (I picked up the 1 and 2 bundle). I loved Laura’s graphic style and after watching a few tutorial videos on her website, I decided her class would be great to try.

I recently completed the first Module -The Basics of Illustrator – which covered basic workspace navigation and drawing with the shape tools. My final project for this module involved using several different shapes and various fill and stroke colors to create a night scene. It’s amazing to me how you can use very basic shapes to build a pretty complex drawing.

Here’s a few screen captures of my project as I put it together:

I started off with shape outlines and then began to add fill colors.

 I learned that you can use shapes to create new shapes like by overlaying two circles to create the moon here.

 I used shapes to add structures to the city like a water tower.

 And added an art deco style tower to another building.

 And added windows to the building using squares and rectangles.

 Finally I moved a few last stars around…

And I had my final image!

It was a great overview and I already feel much more confident trying out my own designs! Have you used Illustrator? Do you have any tips or tricks to share? Or do you have any questions that I (maybe!) could help you with? Let me know in the comments!

Links to Learn More:

• Adobe Illustrator Essentials by Laura Coyle
• Laura Coyle’s website, Illustratoring
• Laura Coyle’s YouTube Channel with Illustrator Tutorials