Sometimes your artwork may call for a very obscure font or maybe even a custom designed font. This also makes the color separations easy and accurate. You might be used to doing online artwork in RGB, but to ensure the most accurate colors with a silk screener, definitely use PMS and CMYK color modes. Now, make things interesting and play some music 😀Īnd finally… place it on a mockup. Draw new objects above the color layers using the Pen Tool (P). Note: Make a new layer below your lineart. Now click on the fields you want to color. Choose your color and choose the Live Paint Bucket tool (K). You can paint the places you want with one click. Then, go to Window > Pathfinder, click on the Unite icon.Ĭhose your colors, and go to Object > Live Paint > Make. To do this, go to Object Menu > click Expand. Once we are done with the inking, we need to turn all the brush paths into objects and merge them. I’m going to use a Medium and Bold brush. All the brush settings are set up, you just need to select the brush with a weight that varies from Ultra-fine to Bolder. Select a brush and start inking the sketch. You can do that by clicking the little paper icon at the bottom right of the Layers Palette. Then, lock the layer by clicking the box next to the eye - a lock symbol will appear.Ĭreate a new layer and name it whatever you want. Or you can drag your sketch from Photoshop to the Illustrator document.ĭouble click the layer with your sketch, and check the box that says Dim Images to: 50%. Go to File > Place > find your image and press Okay.

Let’s open the brush template by going to File > Open Recent Files > find the file My_Inking_template_CS.ai from where you downloaded it, or if you’ve used it before, go to Open Recent Files and it will be there. In Illustrator, you’ll notice you can choose different weights for a brush: Ultra fine, Fine, Medium, Bold and Bolder. I am using a template for the brush settings - you can find it at cartoonsnap. Lets import it into Adobe Illustrator CS6 (note: this can also work in CS5, but I’m not sure about older versions). In this tutorial, you will learn what it takes to design a T-shirt and most importantly, how to prepare the files for print.īefore jumping into the computer, you will need to create a sketch - it will be your guide while inking the outlines of the design. I would love to share what I’ve learned about this field so far.

My name is Darko, aka XLonche on 99designs, and I recently started designing T-shirts.

T shirt design illustrator