I'm a Beginner: How do I draw and color in Illustrator?

[CollegeGiiiiiirl3000]

The videos I watch on YouTube, they move their mouse too fast. I would like to actually see where everything is. I love to draw, so I opened a drawing that I drew and colored on paper to my 2017 Adobe Illustrator. I really don't understand what goes on while watching those tutorial videos because they draw an entire character, erase it and bring it back. I'm just not sure what's going on. All I know is that I love to draw and would like to see my drawings on t-shirts and hoodies. I'd like to sell t-shirts and hoodies with my drawings on them. I found a company that would do that but, not sure what they'd like it saved as nor the size. I'm not sure if I need to be in Illustrator, Photoshop or any other program to do what it is I'm wanting to do.

[Eternal Warrior]

Depends on your style of drawing but Illustrator is pretty good for that sort of thing. Can you give us an example of your style?

Doesn't have to be the full image or anything just a snippet of it.

Drawings in Illustrator are best thought of as described... Illustrations... Think either images made of lines or shapes...

This is constructed by drawing paths and then essentially after all the tweaks adding fills for solid colour or strokes for lines.

Experiment by using the brush tool or pen tool to start with and then add fills and strokes of different colours to start to understand what's possible.

More classical painting etc styles are probably better using Photoshop for things like Landscapes / Portraits etc...

[EDIT] Up to a point you can get similar results in both (with the right know how) but I would say for ease of use - Think with these distinctions....

[Ray Yorkshire]

This course seem simple enough

The Complete Beginners Guide To Adobe Illustrator | Tutorial Overview & Breakdown - YouTube

or the adobe ones

Adobe Illustrator Learn & Support

Everyone finds it confusing at first, unless you have mastered similar programs already

There's really no way around it , you have to put the hours in order  to learn to use it .

[Simmer1]

Hi,

I would suggest getting used to Tools in Illustrator such as the Pen Tool (P) and also the Paintbrush Tool (B) and using shapes like the Rectangle Tool (M) and Ellipse Tool (L).

It takes time to find your feet but I am sure you will be fine.

The cool thing about Illustrator is that it is a vector application and files can be scaled to very large size/scales and the end files size will only be a faction of the size that a pixel file would be. Also it is a great program to create T-shirt designs either from scratch or from a sketch...

Here are a few links that may help you get started:

Draw and edit curves |

Merge basic shapes into editable objects |

Thanks,

Sim