In this tutorial I'll show you how to create a grungy skull illustration using an image and some freebies around the web. These techniques can be easily applied to other grungy illustrations, and not only skulls. You'll learn some useful techniques in this tutorial.
Final Image Preview
Let's have a look at the final image below.
Step 1
First, you are going to need to find a skull picture. I found a nice skull image on iStockphoto. You can download the same one here, or find a similar one.
Step 2
Download the Green Fuzz font and install it on your system.
Step 3
Next, you're going to need to download the Sketchy-Style brushes from Vectips. Once you have downloaded the AI file, open it up in Illustrator. Then you'll see the 30 brushes in your Brush Panel. For this tutorial, we're only going to use a couple of them.
Step 4
With the Sketchy-Style brushes document open, change the document to Landscape Orientation by going to File > Document Setup and clicking the Landscape button from the Orientation choices. Select All (Command+A) of the artwork on the page and then Delete it.
Step 5
Place your skull image by going to File > Place and find you skull image on your computer. Then Scale and Rotate the image to your desired position.
Step 6
Create a new layer from the Layer Panel. Then place the layer above the skull image layer, and lock the skull image layer. With the Pen Tool (P), outline the edges of the skull.
Step 7
In the Brush Panel, click the pop-up panel and select List View. This view makes it easier to pick the name of the brush. With the skull outline selected, choose Vectips Sketch Brush 14.
Step 8
Use your Brush Tool (B) and trace the most predominate lines inside the Skull. Use the same Vectips Sketch Brush 14, but change the stroke to .5 pt.
Step 9
Use the Brush Tool (B) again, to trace the second most predominate lines inside the skull. This time change the stroke weight to .25 pt.
Step 10
With the Pen Tool (P), create some solid shapes in the darkest part of the skull image and fill them with black.
Step 11
Now you can go back and add more brush strokes here and there, finishing off the skull. Then turn off the Visibility on the skull image layer.
Step 12
Create a new layer for the the wavy grunge element. Use the Brush Tool (B) and draw a flowing stroke. Use the same brush as before at 1 pt stroke. If you feel more comfortable drawing with the Pen Tool (P), then go right ahead. Just apply the brush after you've finished drawing.
Step 13
Repeat the previous step until you have an outline of the wavy element.
Step 14
Use the same technique as in the previous step and start filling in the wavy element with brush strokes. This time change the stroke to .5 pt.
Step 15
Again, add some more brush strokes, but this time change the stroke weight to .25 pt.
Step 16
Create a new layer for the text. Type out what you want and choose the Green Fuzz font you downloaded earlier. Outline the text by going to Type > Create Outlines.
Step 17
With the outlined text selected, go to Effect > Warp > Arch to bring up the Warp Options. Change the Bend percentage to 18 and the Horizontal Distortion to -47. Expand the effect by going to Object > Expand.
Step 18
Place the text over the wavy element. Then Scale and Rotate it as needed.
Step 19
Once placed, Copy (Command + C) the text and Paste it in Back (Command + B). Then give the copied text a 9 pt. white stroke.
Step 20
Create a new layer and place the layer below the other layers. Create a rectangle with the Rectangle Tool (M) at the size of your document. Then change the fill to a 23% grey.
Step 21
With the Vectips Sketch Brush 19, draw a couple of strokes behind the skull. Then change the stroke to 9 pt, and creating some nice grunge elements.
Step 22
Repeat the previous step and create some strokes behind the wavy element. All done!
Final Image
Below is the final image completed!
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Michael Thompson July 28th
I love vector tutorials, but someday it’d be nice to see them where there isn’t a step that reads something like, “…and now, trace everything by hand.”
Some combination of Photoshop’s threshold or Illustrator’s Live Trace would be wonderful…someday. I realize they’re not quite perfect yet.
( )Dan July 28th
Nice looking style. I also quite liked the outline overtop of the image as an alternative.
( )Mike July 28th
“I love vector tutorials, but someday it’d be nice to see them where there isn’t a step that reads something like, “…and now, trace everything by hand.”
Some combination of Photoshop’s threshold or Illustrator’s Live Trace would be wonderful…someday. I realize they’re not quite perfect yet.”
even better, an EASY button! That way I can just hit it and wouldn’t have to do any work at all!
( )Bruno Gurgatz July 28th
Wow!!! perfect tutorial! and a very nice result!
( )Carl July 28th
I agree with you Mike, how about in CS4 they have a “Make Art” button and then we can take all artistic choice out of our digital work? End sarcasm.
( )Dan July 28th
Great stuff. I am wanting to do this one as well
( )Nate July 28th
This is an awesome tutorial that is very easy to follow. Good timing on this since all the clothing stores are now mass producing shirts with skulls on them. Gives one idea on how they may have accomplished it.
( )freehander July 28th
“…but someday it’d be nice to see them where there isn’t a step that reads something like, “…and now, trace everything by hand.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, very good! This guy really seems to wait for the “Make Art” button.
( )name required July 28th
http://www.vimeo.com/1046590?pg=embed&sec=1046590
( )K3v July 28th
This is pretty cool!
( )Tolana July 28th
Thanks for sharing the sketchy brushes! This will help!
( )Gabe July 28th
Awesome tutorial, those are some sweet brushes. I usually get intimidated when I see so many lines and things happening in an image, but this broke everything down nicely into repeatable procedures I can use all over the place. Great stuff!
( )Tim Aste July 28th
Great tut
( )WAR July 28th
I really enjoyed this tut and like the finished design. I prefer Illustrator and think this tut has some great info about this software app. Keep them coming.
( )Deepgore July 28th
http://www.gomediazine.com/tutorials/video/drawing-skulls-wacom-tablet/
Go Media would be interested in seeing this.
( )Duluo July 28th
Sure would be nice if there was a feature of this site that could read the tutorial for me and something to maybe copy and paste. I’m tired of typing now. I’m going to go take a nap and pray my work finds a way of doing itself.
( )Qvectors July 29th
@Mike illustrator is basically that, drawing. other than showing how the tools work I don’t know how much more tutorials you can make with out it being repetitive. non the less I’m liking some of the tutorial so far.
( )Shane July 29th
Very nice tutorial indeed - the tracing certainly helps you to brush up on your pen skills
Thanks for posting.
( )Lio July 29th
Really cool result, fact is i have to make a new logo with a technique close to yours… so this tutorial appears just when I needed it!
( )Thanks!
Joefrey Mahusay July 29th
Wow amazing work.
( )Mark Abucayon July 29th
wow that was very nice cool awesome I like the final art.
( )Rich Samuels July 29th
this tutorial immediately brought to mind the Go Media video which two people have already posted about.
the style and technique are far too similar to be a coincidence.
( )MONSTER July 29th
Useful technique and nice outcome.
Cheers!
( )harry July 29th
AWESOME! Real scary
( )Cody July 29th
“http://www.gomediazine.com/tutorials/video/drawing-skulls-wacom-tablet/
Go Media would be interested in seeing this.”
OMG they both traced skulls! How dare somebody else use this technique!
Very cool tut, love this style
( )Ani July 29th
To be fair on the Go Media comments…they were not the first people to use this style and people can’t point fingers here and say they ripped Go Media. I’m sure Go Media will be the first to admit that their style is adopted from other artists that share similar styles. Rob Zombie anyone?
Tutorials are there to encourage people to copy the same style. This tutorial didn’t rip the same tutorial, it just borrowed a similar style, as like every single tutorial out there is borrowing a style of someone else to teach people how to do it in a different way and using different source material.
( )Braden Keith July 29th
Far out dude! I feel a tshirt coming my way.
( )Kim Andre Fosslien Ottesen July 29th
What’s with the “Vectips” logo on the bottom right side of the finished image? I thought that was one of your biggest competitors?
( )Ruaridh Currie July 29th
Fantastic tutorial, it’s tricky finding a good quick effective style of illustration So have defo learned alot from this, thanks.
( )Ani July 29th
@Kim
The guy who created this tutorial is the same guy who created vectips and the brushes used in the tut. Both vectortuts and vectips work together. Rype does tutorials for vectortuts and plugs his site while doing so, then links up this site on his when plugging the tuts he writes on here. Networking. It’s all good.
( )Dino July 29th
That’s what I call a kick-ass tutorial. Great job!
( )kisin July 30th
i just love this site but what im really missing is a newbie tutorials.
( )hoping to see some good newbie tuts coming soon.
w00p July 31st
Yeah nice tutorial, thanks.
( )Max | Design Shard July 31st
thats a reallly cool tutorial thanks for sharing
Max | Design Shard
( )Miguel August 1st
WHY oh WHY do any of you want a tutorial on how to do something like this with livetrace? You disappoint me as artists in every way, actually I don’t think you should even call yourselves that if you think that way. Thanks for the good tutorial on how important brush variation is in creating a good lineart/ pen & ink style is.
( )kamal August 20th
Wow, is very nice the final art, is cool for a t-shert. wow el arte final esta muy bien, esta genial para una camiseta
( )Lawrence77 September 30th
wow
( )Imran November 7th
Wow!! really nice tutorial …
( )Jungle Jones November 23rd
Thank you for this~!
Since istockphoto won’t let you release the sketchy style art brushes (or the watercolor art brushes), can you please link to another source for the #14 and #19 brushes used here? Or better yet, can you create a tutorial for creating art brushes similar to your sketchy style brushes?
( )Patrick February 14th
Thanks a trillion for such an informative and helpful tutorial.
This is super really fantastic as I favour a very traditional pen-and-ink “gravure” style for my work- which is very trad font heavy, (Blackletter Fraktur etc), and this finally allowed the penny to drop and saves me a huge amount of freehand time. I never thought to trace a photo- how silly!
Mr Jones above- try clicking on the link to “vectips”. I found it (http://vectips.com/tutorials/30-sketchy-style-brushes/). On Mr Putnam’s blog you will also find a tutorial on making your own brushes.
http://vectips.com/tutorials/create-sketchy-style-vectors/
PS a huge thanks for the burshes tutorial too- very handy- I made some ‘nibs’.
( )zubair March 6th
amazing man….. it was really helpful
( )CgBaran Tuts May 14th
Great work thanks
( )qwerty1 June 9th
can somebody re-upload the Sketchy-Style brushes, please?
( )