40
votes
Accepted
What are some techniques to give drawings 3D appearance?
I would give you 1 word, but this word turns into another word later.
1. Shadow
I will not use your basketball. I need to simplify this further.
A. No shadow does not give you any 3-dimensional clue.
...
- 36k
23
votes
How would I draw a shadow from a spherical object onto a non-flat surface?
Use a grid system. Draw the circular shadow on a flat non-distorted grid.
Draw the distorted grid, and use the flat grid as a guide, noting where the shadow intersects with the grid lines.
For ...
- 82.3k
22
votes
How would I draw a shadow from a spherical object onto a non-flat surface?
To amplify Billy Kerr's excellent response, if you wanted to set your light source in your illustration other than directly overhead (I can see Billy took, as I do, your initial sketched dashed lines ...
- 9,586
19
votes
Is this animated GIF showing Illustrator step by step drawings easy to understand?
I think without knowing what tools did what, what shortcuts did what, and how to do simple things such as reverse the fill/stroke, the gif may be lacking in detail for inexperienced users. There's ...
- 207k
18
votes
How to draw a radially symmetric 5-pointed star?
A 5 pointed star IS radially symmetrical - The issue here is the rotational centre is skewed by the vertical distance (in this example) of the top point and the bottom 2 points.
OK so, how to solve ...
- 4,704
18
votes
How to draw Samtaegeuk (yin-yang symbol but with three swirls, each a different colour)?
No Software . . .
If you want to draw it by hand, and make it easy for yourself, then get some equilateral triangle (aka isometric) grid paper, or print some out if you have a printer.
Use a compass ...
- 82.3k
17
votes
Accepted
How to efficiently draw bent or curved lines or arrows with Photoshop?
Use the Line Tool:
Select the Line Tool from the tool bar and make sure your layer is set to Shape Layer. Before you make the shape on the artboard, click the gear icon and choose which side of the ...
- 4,066
15
votes
Accepted
How do I draw horizontal/vertical straight line in GIMP?
You can hold Ctrl key with Shift to restrict the angle of the straight line to multiples of 15°.
- 3,071
15
votes
Accepted
Prototype Visualization: How can I learn to render glass convincingly?
I do not think anyone draws without a reference, probably someone that was visually impared since born. We, the rest have visual references all the time. Some skilled people learn how to grab thoose ...
- 36k
15
votes
Is there an easier way to draw a parallelogram aligned with a triangle?
Using the Pathfinder Panel (for CS4 or newer)
This will work in versions earlier than CS4 as well, as long as the version has the Pathfinder Panel (circa AI8 I think). The difference is prior to CS4 ...
- 207k
12
votes
How to draw a radially symmetric 5-pointed star?
As a matter of fact, like you have noticed, there is no equal sided symmetrical five sided star in existence that fulfills the requirement of having center where the star's bounding box center is. ...
- 57.5k
12
votes
Accepted
How to draw a radially symmetric 5-pointed star?
Here's a simple method using Inkscape(dot)org which is free and Open Source.
The main problem is that the centre of rotation of a star is different from the centre of rotation of its bounding box. So ...
- 82.3k
11
votes
Accepted
How can I draw dots in Illustrator?
I recommend using the 'Blob Brush Tool'(Shift+B) to get the stippling effect. It creates a circle each time you click or tap with your tablet pen. For small dots it might create irregular 2-point ...
- 226
11
votes
Accepted
What is the name of this perspective and how is it constructed?
This is an example of a classic one vanishing point bird's eye perspective, but with a
spherical warp in the left-hand side barycentric to the wailing child in the column of walking people.
This ...
- 9,586
10
votes
Is this animated GIF showing Illustrator step by step drawings easy to understand?
There's a few things you could do to improve this good idea and not make it horrible.
You definitely need to add screen keys.
You should break it up into steps and use multiple gifs to show what you'...
- 1,830
10
votes
How can i reproduce this linen print texture?
There's a lot of different tricks to achieve this.
I usually do it something like this:
Base material layer first, then all designs and on the top a copy of the material.
In the layer style panel ...
- 1,672
9
votes
Accepted
Stacked light circle effect in Photoshop?
I think there're different ways to achieve a similar this effect. Here're several ideas:
Use a smart object with Polar Coordinates filter applied. This way you can paint straight lines inside the SO ...
- 4,440
9
votes
How to draw Samtaegeuk (yin-yang symbol but with three swirls, each a different colour)?
You can get something resembling easily by drawing 3 equal, but 120 degrees rotated spirals which start from the center, a circle around them and by filling the areas with the shape builder.
It's ...
- 91
9
votes
How can i reproduce this linen print texture?
The Campcraft image has plenty of low resolution imaging and JPG artifacts, but it looks like a photo of real fabric could do the job. You seem to know that.
There are whole bunch of other tricks ...
- 257
8
votes
Accepted
From a CAD model to an Illustration drawing. How to?
All current, generation of CAD and DCC software make the hidden line removal on discrete (tri or quadrangulate) data. There really is no good way to handle it otherwise available in the open market*.
...
- 57.5k
8
votes
Make a letter thinner with Inkscape
give your text a stroke
convert the stroke to path
perform Break Apart path operation, Reduce the opacity to 25(so that the overlapping paths could be identified)
Remove unwanted parts(the outer and ...
- 151
8
votes
How to draw a leaf using Inkscape
Here are a couple of techniques
Make an ellipse (not a circle), and rotate it
Duplicate Ctrl+D, and reflect the ellipse horizontally H
Hold down Ctrl as you click and drag the duplicate away so ...
- 82.3k
7
votes
How to expand a paper texture from a photo across a wider resolution than the original photo?
I'd just replace the background altogether. For this quick example I used the Magic Wand to make a selection of the background, inverted the selection, then applied a layer mask and put it on top of a ...
- 20k
7
votes
Illustrator: How to make a precise circular arc with ratio and length
Draw your second image, without the arrows.
Select all
Click the Divide button on the Pathfinder Panel.
Delete what you don't need
- 207k
7
votes
Any way to improve drawing with a mouse in Illustrator
Yes of course. Learn to use the Pen tool. I very rarely use a graphics tablet with Illustrator unless I want to draw something freehand.
There's a fun website where you can learn how to use the Pen ...
- 82.3k
7
votes
Methods to create curved lines
A blend...
Draw a rounded rectangle...
(Or a regular rectangle and then round two corners equally.)
Just a stroke and no fill....
Delete sections of the shape by using the Direct Selection Tool (...
- 207k
7
votes
What is Albrecht Dürer's Perspective Machine drawing style?
You might also be interested in scratch-board or scraper-board techniques that approximate some of these effects. Although the process is different, the line quality is/can be very similar.
- 5,041
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible