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How to Make Your Illustrations Look Professional

An illustrator is an artist that creates images to go along with other media. Illustrators are often hired to make artwork for advertisements, articles, and other media. Crafting professional-looking artwork is a challenge, but anyone can...

Creating Great Art

  1. Sketch out your initial design using lighter strokes. It's hard to create a masterful illustration if jump right into the final line work. Start each illustration using a pencil or light drawing tool and outline the basic elements of your sketch. This will make it easier to make minor adjustments and spot any problems with the composition before you get too far into the drawing process.[1]
    1. Most professional illustrators work digitally, but you can specialize in physical drawing if you'd like. Many illustrators scan or photograph the work their physical work and touch it up digitally.

    Tip: Feel free to draw whatever you want—especially if you're just practicing. Illustrators draw a wide range of subjects and rely on a variety of different styles, so don't restrict yourself to whatever you imagine 'professional' illustrations are.

  2. Use a variety of different lines to create a dynamic composition. As you develop your initial sketch, use different line sizes and shades to build your drawing and create shapes. Use thicker lines to outline sharper features and thinner, softer strokes to build textures and shadows. Alternate between using straight lines to add definition, and free-flowing lines to develop uneven shapes.[2]
    1. For example, you may use harsher, wider lines to outline the grooves in the bark of a tree. Then, you might use lighter strokes to add texture, and random jagged lines to give the wood grooves.
    2. There is an exception to this for abstract and minimalist illustrations. These styles rarely use a ton of different lines and often rely on a single type of line to create a sense of consistency in the work.
  3. Use color palettes that strike the viewer to grab their attention. The colors you choose are crucial to developing professional-looking illustration. Use color palettes that contrast well with one another and suit your composition. For example, an upbeat minimalist drawing may use bright yellow, pink, and baby blue. A darker image may utilize bright gray, black, and white alone.[3]
    1. Use shades of the same color to make images look 3 dimensional and dynamic. For example, a basketball may be light orange on the right side where the light bounces off and a burnt orange on the opposite side where the shadow is. There may be 3-5 different shades of orange in that single object.
    2. Choose contrasting colors to make different objects pop. For example, a black tie against a blue shirt won't stand out very well, but black on yellow or white will pop off of the page.
  4. Incorporate your colors based on the medium and style you're using. When you add your colors depends on your process and tools. If you're using colored pencils or markers, work from the lightest shades to the darkest colors. Digitally, you can build your colors up as you go. Add watercolor or acrylic shades to physical work last and work over them after they dry as needed.[4]
    1. Adding color last will emphasize the colors themselves and improve contrast. Adding the outlines and line work last will put the focus on the lines themselves. It really depends on what you're drawing and what your goal is.
  5. Maintain a consistent light source to guide your shadows and highlights. Select a single point either in the composition or just outside of it to place your light source. It can be a lamp or sun in the drawing itself or you can imagine a light source outside of the composition itself. Use the light source throughout the drawing process to guide your shadows and highlights to keep them consistent.[5]
    1. To create dynamic shadows, most artists choose to put the light source in the top right or top left of the frame. It can really go anywhere, though.
    2. For amateur artists, adding inaccurate highlights and shadows is one of the most common mistakes. Consistent light is one of the best ways to make an illustration look professional.

Improving Your Technique

  1. Take advanced art classes to improve your overall skills. Look online for classes at local galleries or art shops. Contact your local university to look into taking some art classes. Find a class for advanced artists to really push your skills to the max and pick up some new tricks. Attend a class every 1-2 weeks to stick with it and improve as an artist.[6]
    1. You may be able to take an online class if you keep odd hours or work a full-time job. In the age of the internet, there are resources everywhere! Hop on YouTube or check out some articles on advanced drawing skills to develop your technique.
  2. Set aside 1-2 hours a day to illustrate and practice. It's hard to craft professional-looking illustrations if you aren't drawing regularly. Reserve time every day to work on your illustrations and continue to practice. For many people, setting time aside first thing in the morning is a great way to stay motivated and start the day on a creative note.[7]
    1. Don't get in the habit of forcing yourself to finish illustrations in a single 4- to 5-hour session. Taking breaks and spending time on an image will keep you from getting tunnel vision and making mistakes.
  3. Challenge yourself by tackling tougher compositions and subjects. Illustrators are asked to draw a wide range of subjects. Force yourself to develop by choosing complex subjects for your practice sessions. Pick unique perspectives, draw people from odd angles, and work on drawing objects you're unfamiliar with to develop a better sense for a variety of subjects.[8]

    Tip: Hands, eyes, bicycles, flowers, and fantasy characters are all pretty complicated. These subjects are great for practice if you're not feeling particularly inspired.

  4. Play around with realistic and abstract styles to push yourself. Illustrators have distinct styles, but they often work with clients to create work that fits an article, advertisement, or some other media. Since every job is different, it's important to have a variety of techniques and styles at your disposal. Create a variety of realistic, abstract, minimalistic, and cartoonish images to push the envelope and develop as an artist.[9]
    1. Illustrators often create logos as well. If this is something you're interested in, work on mocking up and drawing logos for made-up companies to see what you can come up with!
  5. Practice by creating illustrations for stories and articles you read. Illustrators are tasked with crafting images that match a product or piece of media. Pick a novel, article, or product and practice crafting an image that matches it. This will give your illustrations a sense of purpose and you'll get better at taking a core concept and turning it into a piece of art.[10]
    1. For example, you could design an illustration for a soda company's billboard by drawing someone enjoying a refreshing drink, or draw a thumbnail for an article about endangered animals by showing a majestic bird flying away from pollution.
    2. Illustrating scenes from a novel is a great way to work on storyboarding and creating narrative images that go with one another!
  6. Keep a notebook and write your ideas down when you get them. You never know when inspiration is going to strike! Keep a small notebook in your pocket and jot down any ideas you get when you're going about your day. Use the ideas in your notebook to choose interesting subjects and practice developing your art from concept to product.[11]
    1. You can use a phone to keep notes if you want, but using a notebook is great because you can make a quick sketch of your idea if you're more of a visual thinker.
  7. Let your artistic style develop naturally to find your voice. It's fine to copy another artist's work if you want to practice or try a new technique, but don't get bogged down in trying to find a single style. Your personality as an artist will develop naturally over time and forcing yourself into a corner will only put limits on your art as you're going from amateur drawing to professional illustration.[12]
    1. If you're really good at a particular style of drawing, there's nothing wrong with sticking with it. Some illustrators specialize in specific types of art, but many professionals use a variety of different styles to adapt to different projects.

Using an Illustration Program

  1. Download Adobe Illustrator if you want to get into professional illustration. Adobe Illustrator is the industry standard. You can use the program to create work from scratch, edit physical art to touch it up, and play with colors and filters to give your art the most professional look possible. Go to Adobe's website and pay to download the program on your computer.[13]
    1. Illustrator is subscription-based. You must pay $20 a month to keep it on your computer. If this is too much, there are plenty of cheaper or free alternatives.

    Tip: Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop are very similar, but there's one key difference that changes everything. Photoshop uses pixels, while Illustrator uses vectors. This means that images in Photoshop get distorted when the resolution is changed, but anything you make in Illustrator will retain its details when you mess with the scale.[14]

  2. Use an alternative illustration program if you're a freelancer or hobbyist. If you aren't a professional artist and you simply want to improve the look of your illustrations, there's no need for Adobe Illustrator. Affinity Designer is the most popular option, but Sketch and Vectr are great choices as well. Inkscape and BoxySVG are free and popular options too. Go online and download an illustration program.[15]
    1. It is very hard to create professional-looking illustrations without touching your images up digitally. Basically every illustration you see in products, ads, and publications is edited with an illustration program.
  3. Scan or photograph physical art and import it into the program. If you want to edit a piece of physical art, you have 2 options. The first is to use a scanner to create digital copy of your art. The other option is to photograph the artwork and import the photo into illustrator. Choose whichever option is easiest for you based on the artwork and select 'import' in the illustration program to open it up.[16]
    1. If you're taking a photo, use a high-quality camera, turn on plenty of lights, and avoid using flash to get an accurate reproduction of the artwork.
  4. Touch up your art by adding or editing the line work and textures. Select the brush tool and adjust the size, shape, and transparency of the line. Use a tablet, art pad, or your mouse to add minor elements to your illustration. This is perfect for making really small adjustments that are hard to do on paper. Download texture packs or use the preloaded textures to turn flat shades of color into dynamic surfaces.[17]
    1. You can turn anything into a texture by converting an image into a new layer and changing the transparency.
  5. Make larger changes by adding additional layers or images. To combine or add new elements to an image, use the layer tool to add another surface to the artwork. Then, import a second piece of art or a pre-rendered digital object. Move it around on the illustration to create dynamic collages and intricate designs.[18]
    1. Working in layers is one of the hardest parts of mastering an illustration program. It's absolutely essential if you want to toy around with making major changes, though.
  6. Adjust the light levels and colors to make your illustration pop. Pull up the color sliders to adjust the overall colors and toy with the saturation. To change the colors of individual objects, use the snipping tool to isolate or cut out pieces of the artwork and adjust its colors separately from the rest of the piece. Play around with the colors in your art until you're happy with the way it looks.[19]
    1. Saturation refers to the intensity of the colors. Professional illustrations are often highly saturated to make the colors pop as much as possible. This attracts people and draws them in to look at the media associated with the illustration.
    2. There are no hard rules when it comes to color. It's entirely up to you as an artist to determine what the colors in your art actually look like.
  7. Use filters to change the artwork entirely and give it a new look. There are a variety of filters built into your illustration program, but you can find additional filters online. Filters apply a uniform texture or style to a piece of art without you doing anything by hand. You can use filters to make your image look like it's from a comic book, make it look like it was printed in a newspaper, or adjust your drawing with a pattern or texture.[20]
    1. Professional illustrators use filters sparingly and rarely use them to radically change an image, but they definitely can make your drawing look professional without doing too much work.
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