Freehand: Drawing Basic

Drawing Basic


This section of Mike's Sketchpad takes up the drawing features of Deneba Canvas™, Adobe® Illustrator®, CorelDRAW® and Macromedia® FreeHand®. No attempt is being made to review these products or cover all their features. Instead, this section covers the most common features between these four applications. These are the basics of all drawing programs. Once you grasp these basics, then the most difficult part is behind you.

Mastering Illustration Programs To master any program and before being able to attain any skill one has to first clear up and define the major functions and understand them conceptually. Find out for yourself what the words mean. Unfortunately, when a computer is going to be used as a drawing tool, the finished work and all its intervening steps have to be defined and described down to the last detail. These things must all have names and exact descriptions in order to communicate to you, the user. There are quite a few of these concepts along with the words that describe them. Fortunately, there are many points of agreement between the four applications. Even though you plan to specialize in only one of them the job of learning will be easier. This is because there is a simple pattern common to all illustration programs which lies beneath the apparent complexity. I have tried to simplify it here in these web pages. Digital illustration is a fairly deep subject and is a worthy challenge to master. The payoff is worth the effort and illustrators will be able to realize their talents by putting forth the work and discipline needed to master the subject.

Drawing Tutorials:

Vector Anatomy 1
Vector Anatomy 2
Vector Anatomy 3
Vector Anatomy 3a

Vector Anatomy 4
Predefined Shapes
Keyboard Shortcuts
Shortcut Examples

Practice Templates
Pen Tips
Terminology
Using Masks

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Source: http://www.sketchpad.net

Design Tutorials