Ultimate Inking and Coloring Tutorial for Adobe Illustrator (short version)

The Fastest, Easiest Method to Ink and Color in Adobe Illustrator.
Please read the video description below before posting questions.

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See the tutorial on my blog: claytowne.com/beats-digging-ditches/ultimate-di…

Or download the companion Illustrator editable PDF file: claytowne.com/beats-digging-ditches/pdf/Simple_…

The brush I used is embedded in the file.

The brush I used is this Hair Brush by ChewedKandi. You'll need a DeviantArt account to download it. Download here: chewedkandi.deviantart.com/art/Hair-and-line-ar…

Screenshot of brush settings used screencast.com/t/cVCuDIlyyUh

About Those "Lines" You See When You Use this Method:

If you are referring to the microscopic lines where they intersect, or where you cut with the knife, that's an illusion. Zoom in to 6400%. They never get bigger. They don't print that way either. I've been using this technique for years and my stuff has always printed perfectly on posters, trade show pop ups, t-shirts, postcards - everything really - without issues. If they really bother you Try Export/Tiff. That gives a clean export. So will Save For Web/PNG ( Art Optimized -Supersampling) or JPG. In the Web save box you can change the pixel dimensions to any size you want so you can save some pretty huge, print quality images.


Tech Specs for people who are into this stuff:

I use a Wacom Intuos 4 medium size tablet for all drawing. If you are a serious artist you MUST have a tablet. At the very least get a Wacom Bamboo. They're like $50. I'm running a custom rig that I built myself back in 2009. It's a Windows 7 64 bit box with a Asus P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard. It's got 12 GB Corsair DDR3 RAM, a Pentium i7 920 CPU, a Nvida GeForce GTX 280 graphic card, six WD Caviar Black 1TB drives in a RAID 1 configuration. My OS and programs are on one RAID array, and the other two RAID arrays hold my files. I also have two RAID 1 external drives for additional backups. Rounding out the system is a Corsair XT 750 power supply, two 1000 watt UPS backups, a USB 3 PCI Express card, an eSATA PCI express card (I ran out of SATA ports with so many hard drives) a HD Pro Logitec webcam and a pair of DVD burners.

There are a lot of excellent ink and color tutorials on the web, so what is different about this tutorial?

1. Real time. Unlike those speed drawing tutorials that blow your mind but teach you nothing, this one is a true speed drawing tutorial as it's in real time. No cuts and no sped up sections to hide the true time it takes.

2. Learn a practical but unorthodox technique for speeding up your inking and coloring in Illustrator.

3. Vector. In the print industry vector rules the roost so those Photoshop inking tutorials aren't very helpful for someone who's primary concern is clean reproduction in all mediums including brochures, t-shirts, posters, trade show booths, video and packaging.

This method is not the most sophisticated but it gets the job done quick and it looks great. I also discovered one of its key components by accident.

It's great for poster art, cartoon characters, comic book art or any place you need a classic ink and color look - and need it fast