There's a stack of creative people here at SB - fine artists and designers.. I'm curious, how many of you are working as a professional artist without any knowledge of Illustrator?

I've tried to learn this program a couple of times over the years with no luck. It just doesn't click.. it's like watching a foreign movie with no subtitles to me. Does anybody else feel the same way? Has anybody found a magic tutorial online that was directed more towards traditional artists?

I'd be more curious as to how anyone CAN work as a 'professional artist' without any knowledge of Illustrator! What's the alternative?

I've used Illustrator for years. I also used Freehand back in the day
. . . and CorelDRAW! Photoshop then introduced 'vectors' but I've ignored that.

Is it the manual drawing of vectors on a path that's been the problem?
There's a knack to generating curves. Once it clicks, it becomes quite fluid.

Trust me, there's nothing wrong with Illustrator . . . .

Well there was that Caravaggio scamp and don't get me started on da Vinci that dude not only didn't use Illustrator but for fucks sake he didn't even have a Twitter account!

I love Illustrator! But ive noticed most people that are great at drawing can't grasp vectors and grid shading. I took a class with a great teacher that pretty much said think of this program as working with shapes instead of lines. That worked out for me.

Hacks, the pair of 'em . . . but point taken. I was talking from a graphics/design perspective.

anyone have any good tutorial links? I'm pretty good with PS but always wanted to learn Illustrator.
Do they make good step by step class books for illustrator..?

Illustrator was tough when I started out too, but now it's my go to program. Not sure what it is specifically thats buggin' you but I have to agree with MOOG, the pen tool has a learning curve but once you figure out proper way of using it, it becomes second nature.

http://www.lynda.com
costs money, but well worth it.

Take an image "Vectorize" it and clean it up.

Never used Illustrator. 100% Photoshop both in school and professionally

I use illustrator maybe 10% of the time right now.. previously a ton more when I was doing more branding projects.

It comes down to ease of use for the pentool drawing and editing paths and type. It's basically 70% Indesign 20% photoshop 10% illustrator In my current job. If you are a graphic artist Illustrator should be your software of choice especially if you are screenprinting. I dont want to think about how painful it would be dealing with colour separations through photoshop..

I dont remember how to use it since it was around 7 years ago, but I took a class back in high school and was able to do some basic stuff in Illustrator in about a week. Having someone who knows what they're doing teach you is so much easier than figuring it out yourself through tutorials. Maybe see if a fellow artist will teach you or if there's a community college nearby that teaches a course.

Guess I'll haveto get with the times and starting listening to "compact discs" and learning this Illustrator stuff... Ah geez I'll miss the good ole days of paying a penny for a bus ride

Best way I can put it is Illustrator = Pen Tool.
Like making masks into shapes like in After Effects/Photoshop. Outlines and Fills.
Pen Tool, and adjust curves.
Or Pencil/Brush Tool, and draw. Cmd+Shift+A will be your best friend for de-selecting paths.
That is about as deep as I go.

I've been using Illustrator for about 7 years and am absolutely in love with it. Very versatile and a tool full of amazing features. I am still learning about new features all the time too. For quality of printing and display you really can't beat a vector. I do however can see how it is a turn off for people who come from a drawing background as its a very different process of creating. My suggestion is to slowly start vectoring simple images so you get a grasp of the tools... Once you do it becomes a second nature much like anything else!

If by "traditional artists" you mean freehand drawing, painting, and sculpting as opposed to graphic or applied/commerical arts, then maybe that's the crux of your frustration right there ... it's not a "traditional" tool in that sense. What is it you want to achieve with the program? Is it possible that some other digital approach such as Corel Painter would better suit your skills and goals? Or possibly something in the 3D modeling/rendering world?

When I set out to tackle Photoshop many moons ago, my best friends (besides practice) were various online tutorials that showed me how to do one thing at a time, or step-by-step tutorials that, if followed, taught the use of a variety of in-app tools and shortcuts. You say you've already tried some tutorials ... maybe a comprehensive course such as ones offered by Lynda.com might help?

My guess, without knowing more, is that Illustrator isn't the solution to the problem in this case. Best of luck!

Thanks for all of the advice guys I'm sure I'm not the only one who is struggling with this program!

The recent source of frustration is coming from doing some turnaround character drawings for an animation project and having issues arise because I submitted the final files as .psd/jpeg rather than an .ai file. If the turnaround drawings are just a guide used for modelling the character then I don't see why the file type should matter.. But it's what they want so I'll have to get some of those tutorials happening over the weekend

check out skillshare!
great lessons and teachers

If they were expecting .ai and were disappointed to receive jpegs or .psd's, that means that they were looking for scalable vectors. Anything you create with vectors in Illustrator is infinitely scalable without any loss due to compression / pixelation.

As a designer, I wouldn't be able to do my job without Illustrator. I actually don't even do that much illustrating in Illustrator, oddly enough. Every single printed piece that I design is put together in Illustrator, unless it's a multi-page document, in which case it's done in InDesign. Even images that I design in Photoshop using filters / actions / layers / etc. have some kind of type element to them, so what I do is put the image elements together in Photoshop, and then place the Photoshop document into an Illustrator file and do my type treatments via Illustrator.