How to Create Vector Art From Doodles

2.3 How to Doodle?

Hello guys, and welcome back to How to Vector Doodle Art course, with Yulia Sokolova at Tuts+. This time we'll be revealing some tips and tricks on doodling. We'll learn how to draw simple stylized objects, making them recognizable. We'll be drawing using all memory and associations, and then using some references for writing details if needed. Let's begin. So first of all, a few words about using references and your memory. When I doodle, I prefer using some images from my memory. For example, for my travel doodles, I start by drawing an air balloon. I guess many of you have seen such balloons on the pictures or even in real life. I imagine it as a big ball with stripes and the wooden basket, which is tied to the balloon with some ropes. As a rule, all of us have some common ideas in our heads of how some specific object looks like. Especially people, one of the same nationality or country or age or other mutual features. And this image makes the object well recognizable. For example, if we're talking about a house. Since our childhood, most of people imagine a house like a combination of a triangle roof and a square wall with a window. And it doesn't matter if your house haven't ever looked like this. You will have this image in your head anyway. You would draw a house like this. Most of the people will recognize it and can tell what it is without any hesitation. However, if we draw some futuristic skyscraper or other surrealistic architecture object, it may be hard to recognize. Same with the things like a cup of coffee or a car or anything else. Speaking about references, if you can't draw the needed object without a reference, for example, if it is hard for you to depict some minor details or the needed pose, it is very important to find the right reference. Let's take a look at the following references of the horses. They look interesting and creative but if we use them as a reference of a pose and trace them with the outlines, the common image of the horse may become hard to recognize. So it would be better to use the following image of a pose reference because it is a more common look of a horse. So going back to our theme, in this tutorial I'll be doodling travel objects. And I'll be using just my associations with traveling, occasions, journeys, summertime, and so on. I decided not to depict any complex or rare objects in order to make my set more universal and more practical and useful for advertisement designs because we'll be making some of the templates during this course. So I'm using my mechanical pencil and drawing with very light strokes in order to make it easier to erase them later. I'm depicting an air balloon, a suitcase, our planet, a photo camera, a sailboat, a fish, a starfish, a compass, an anchor, some swirls, a stylish summer sun, And swirly clouds, and a photo card. So now as my pencil sketches are ready. I take a black liner and just start outlining the balloon above the pencil strokes. I try to make continuous steady strokes without lifting my pen from the paper in order to avoid making hair lines and any stray points which can bring certain marks to our image. The more neat and tidy your doodle is, the easier it will be to transfer it into your computer, turning it to a vector later. You can either use one of the same lines for all the elements or you can use thicker lines for the outlines and thinner lines for the minor details. Continue outlining your sketch, making nice flowing lines. And as you finished, make sure that the black lines are dry and use the eraser to get rid of the pencil strokes, leaving only the black outlines. Add more elements to your liking. And there you have it, a nice clean contrast image of simple travel doodles. This is all guys. In our next video, we'll transfer our doodles into our computer, and tweak them a bit, preparing for vectoring. Stay tuned.