Professional Workflow for Creating Photorealistic Portraits in Illustrator – Vector Plus Tutorial

Nov 4th in News by Saurabh Sharma

We have another great Vector Plus tutorial available exclusively for Plus members today. If you want to learn how to create professional photorealistic portraits in Illustrator, then we have an awesome tutorial for you. Learn proper workflow for working with Gradient Meshes on large projects. Learn more about this tutorial at the jump!

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Author: Saurabh Sharma

Freelance graphic designer with a strong passion for Logo designing.

This Vector Plus Tutorial is Filled with Creative Techniques and a Professional Workflow

In this tutorial, we'll cover some important tips, techniques, and professional workflow to simplify your efforts while creating photorealistic portraits. Assuming that you are familiar with the basic use of the Mesh Tool, we'll dive right into more advanced mesh techniques!

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Plus members can Log in and Download! If you're not a member, you can of course join today! You can view the final illustration below.

This is a Detailed and Professional Tutorial

Plus members can Log in and Download! Otherwise, Join Now! Below are sample images, which show some of the development of this tutorial.

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Vector Plus Membership

As you know, we run a premium membership system here called Plus that costs $9 a month (or $22 for 3 months!) which gives members access to the Source files for tutorials as well as periodic extra tutorials, like this one! If you're a Plus member you can log in and download the tutorial. If you're not a member, you can of course join today!

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User Comments

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  1. PG

    ArtBox7.com November 4th

    Hey Saurabh, I’ve just wanted to visit your site but it looks like the link is pointing me to gmail.com…

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    Pasquale November 4th

    intense amount of work!- but after vectoring from a pixel based reference, it kinda gets to a point where it’s so blurry you might as well work in raster right?

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      Collin November 4th

      Agreed – but I think this is just to give you the workflow incase there is a project you need to do similar work on

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    designfollow November 4th

    great tutorials

    good luck

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    Melody November 4th

    Whoa, that portrait is really cool…the stray hairs are looking a little like they don’t belong–everything else is smooth while the hair is sharp..

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      margaret November 4th

      what about his facial hair? It vanished!

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        buzzfuzz November 4th

        he shaved his facial hair off while they were vectoring his face.

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    g3niuz November 5th

    this really looks professional ;DD

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    Oli November 5th

    I can’t bielive That some poeple are going to pay to have things you can get for free!

    Thanks for the free past time ;)

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    jaznot November 5th

    nice duplication of image as far as making it look like the photo but i thought the point was to improve upon an image to make it an illustration. it’s so soft in the details that it looks like a gaussian blur or surface blur, one of the steps should be final refinement of edges and contrast. also, hair highlights seem a little too harsh.

    (good technique)

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    Waasys November 5th

    + Again (

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    Niek November 5th

    i want to learn this, is this going to be avalaible for normal members?

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      Ibesoringola November 6th

      Unfortunately Niek, it’s only for Plus Members.

      ( Reply )
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    devDsine November 6th

    good one saurabh,

    some part of the hair look little odd, though

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    hobyt November 10th

    This is a Detailed and Professional Tutorial,,,,,

    Really nice mesh…

    oops

    but

    where’s the beard and moustache

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      Saurabh November 11th

      @hobyt

      Thanks for the appreciation. This tutorial is aimed at describing the workflow for creating such portraits, which may help you in similar projects.

      Objects like hairs, mustache, beard and eyebrows can be made photorealistic with the same wireframe mesh technique as described in this tutorial. I did’nt repeated this technique for beard, mustache and hairs in this tutorial; as the purpose of showing the technique is solved in the formation of face, lips and eyes.

      You may give it a try for hairs. Just be sure that too much of manual swooshes for hairs can make the photo unreal, as in the final image.
      Thanks everyone :)

      ( Reply )
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    hiittech November 12th

    great work awesome

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    hiittech November 12th

    I should apply

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    Imran Ali Dina November 13th

    Amazing work bro.

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    تجريبي كوم November 15th

    thank u

    ( Reply )
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