Illustrator Skills

I would like to enter a few competitions, however I've had a though and I'm at a major disadvantage because I have never used Adobe Illustrator and it seems that the majority of illustrators use this software (the kind of illustrations I like anyways). 

So I'm teaching myself Illustrator. I have a graphics tablet (which I got not this Christmas but the year before and gave up trying to use as I have no patience), but I thought I'd start with the basics.

I thought I would  draw something by hand and scan it in to have a mess around with it. However, my scanner had other ideas so until I go back to college I'll be using images I found on the internet that aren't my own.

I really like the idea of having a design and being able to change it and make it different just by changing the colours. So that's what I've been doing here using 'Live trace".  

original

The first try used live trace but there were gaps in the solidness of the lines so I couldn't colour fill some letters (meaning I don't know how to draw in the gaps yet!). It seemed pretty simple and I only used live trace, colour fill bucket and the pipette options.

Very basic but it really does make a simple line drawing look so much more vibrant and professional. Plus, it took me literally 2 minutes to do. Time is a big thing to me, especially seeing as I will never be a full time illustrator and hopefully I'll be doing events management mainly. I think that illustration to me is more for fun and leisure as I don't want to ever be told what to draw.

first try

On the second try I decided to make the lines more solid by posterising the lines and making them fuller. I did this layer before going to live trace so that there would be no gaps as in the first try. This worked! I then simply filled in the colour, however this time I decided to see what the design would look like without the outline and coloured that in too in the same colour as the type. I guess the difference would depend on the colours used and the purpose of the design but it's only a mess around at the mo.

second try

So......

Now I can change the colours in a design. I now want to learn how to:

1. draw in illustrator with graphics tablet
2. work with vectors (not much idea about this, however I think it;s about scale and re-sizing without losing the image quality)
3. repeat pattern
4. learn what to do it what program i.e. illustrator to photoshop (I had to drag the Ai files into photoshop to make them into Jpegs just to put them on this blog, but maybe there are other things to do from an illustrator file in photoshop)