What you'll learn

While Illustrator does excel at creating logos, icons, and other vector graphics, it is an illustration program at its heart. So, to begin this Illustrator tutorial, after preparing our file to work in, we will start by learning a number of ways to block in the shadows or black shapes of our image. While adding to the darkest values, we will learn about important tools like the pen tool, blob brush and pencil tool, and see the strengths of each. After simplifying our sketch to only black and white values, we will begin to soften some of the transitions between the two by using a powerful feature in Illustrator known as blends. If this is your first time working with blends, this will serve as a great introduction because we'll focus on using them to create simple hatching and cross hatching patterns. After going through this tutorial, you will have a great idea of how to execute a film noir styled illustration inside of Adobe Illustrator.