TutsArena

Learn to draw a cool motorcycle in Illustrator

by Bogdan Lucut - Tutorials

Here is a tutorial that is going to teach you to draw a motorcycle from scratch, from a rough pencil sketch to a complete image, in Adobe Illustrator.

Final image

This is the result of about 12 hours of work starting with a rough pencil sketch and ending with Adobe Illustrator CS3.

1. The Sketch

In this tutorial I will show you one way to render a bike in Adobe Illustrator CS3. Start with a sketch. This is a pencil sketch which I did in 10 minutes. After that I set the CONTRAST and LEVELS in Adobe Photoshop.

2. Wheels

Let’s do the wheels. Draw ellipses in order to get the tire profile right. After you’re done, duplicate the tire and drag it to the front or to the back depending on the starting area of the drawing.

3. The Rims

Now go to the front wheel. Start by drawing one element of your rim. In my sketch the rim has 5 elements. In order to get this right, select the shape you drew and press R key. Place the blue cursor into the center of your rim. Now holding ALT key, click and drag the shape in order to duplicate it. Afterwards, press CTRL+D keys to generate the other shapes in order to complete your rim. Duplicate the entire rim and move it into the back.

4. Completing the tires

Although the bike is in sideview, you can still see the profile of the tire. We will build that now. Start by drawing a curve using PEN TOOL. Now do the math…a circle has 360 degrees; we want to repeat the curve eighteen times. That means 20 degrees between the curves. Go to OBJECT/TRANSFORM/TRANSFORM EACH, fill 20 into the value box. There is a square to the right, indicating 9 points. Select the one from the left at the bottom. That will rotate the curve like we want. Repeat this until you have completed a circle, as showed hereby.

5. Drawing the rest

At this stage you should be able to use PEN TOOL pretty well. So using PEN TOOL, ellipses and rectangles, you should end up with this. From time to time remember to switch on the sketch layer in order to see if you are going into the right direction. Feel free to improvise your initial sketch. Don’t worry about the parts which shouldn’t be visible. We will cut them in the next step.

6. Cuting and Triming

Firstly, adjust the stroke values, depending on the shapes, importance etc. After that, select the drawing and go to OBJECT/ EXPAND. Now let’s trim and cut. Open PATHFINDER box (SHIFT+CTRL+F9 keys). Start with the back wheel and select the first two big ellipses, RIGHT CLICK/ ARANGE/ BRING TO FRONT. Select the ellipses and the tire profile shape and click TRIM from PATHFINDER box. Delete the unwanted pieces. Enjoy cutting the rest.

7. Finalize the drawing

When you’re done with cutting you will come to this stage. Now check if all shapes are well connected or if you want to modify shapes a little bit, now it’s the right time.

8. Color

Ok, let’s color this thing. Choose red, it doesn’t matter if you fill up some parts like the tires, which will change later on. Make a rectangle, fill it with red, RIGHT CLICK/ARANGE/SEND TO BACK. Go to OBJECT/EXPAND and click TRIM. Delete the outer parts and the shapes that are transparent, to obtain the result form my image.

9. Appling Gradients

Next step is to start applying gradients on the wheels. I chose a blue-shaded black and a light grey. The back fender will cast some shadows on the tire, thus duplicate the inner part of the tire and TRIM it to look as showed hereby. On these two shapes created apply a blue/ white gradient. Change the mode to MULTIPLAY and the TRANSPARENCY to 45. After you are done with the back side play the same way with the front wheel.

10. Chrome Parts

My rule is to start with the wheels and continue with the rims, chrome parts, glass. We keep the body for the final stages. Using a gradient composed from more than 4 greys and black+ white, you can achieve a metal – chrome exhaust system. You can use the same gradient for the other similar parts by using EYEDROPPER TOOL.

11. The Rims

Now the rims…Let’s make them have a polished metal look. Don’t use only greys, use also some blue and make the transitions smoothly. Touch up some strokes like the big one from the rim ring. Follow the same step for the back rim.

12. The Small Pieces

It’s time to do the rest of the small pieces before we start working on the body. So, apply a gradient on the piece which covers the transmission system. For the selected shape I changed from NORMAL mode to LUMINOSITY. In order to do that go to GRADIENT/ TRANSPARENCY. Feel free to change the mode in order to suit your desired effect. Color the telescope and the small intake.

13. Preparing The Body

As you can see, now with all the small pieces rendered it’s easier to imagine how will the body look and where to start from. But before that, let’s get rid of the strokes inside the body. The strokes are now looking like outlines and we don’t need that. Go to ARANGE/ BRING TO FRONT by right clicking on the red shapes. After that move the points to cover the strokes. Keep the exterior strokes and a few others (as you will see later on) to define the bike.

14. Ready

When you’re done with the strokes the body should look like this. It’s looking like you have one big shape but in fact you have lots of them representing different shapes waiting to be rendered. Apply a gradient on the windscreen.

15. Fenders

Start with the back fender. Have a look over my gradient bar. You can add cursors during the process depending on what you need. Or you can move them to fine tune your gradient applied on the shape. Choose RADIAL for the gradient direction, in order to follow the shape of the fender.

16.Shadows

Now we need to cast a nice shadow on the fender. Copy the fender shape and paste it in place with CTRL+F. Draw with PEN TOOL a line which follows the fender to get a shadow as realistic as possible. Trim it and delete the part you don’t need. Apply a dark red gradient. This time the gradient is linear although you could also use the radial.

17. Finishing The Fender

Now we have to color the tiny shape from the edge of the fender to give it depth.

18. Front Fender and Starting on Body

After you’re done with the front fender start doing the body of the bike.
Those shapes are in the same group, thus the gradient will be continuous on all of them as you can see in this screenshot.

19. Gradients

I chose to have the light source from above but it also reflects from the ground. Keep that in mind when working on the body.

20. Light Source

Continuing with the body, keep organizing yourself by fallowing the main light source.

21. Return to Your Sketch

You should getting used to return from time to time to your initial drawing, and if you applied values on it, check how is the light flowing and follow it with your gradients.

22. Take a Break

Now step back and have a look for one minute at what you have achieved so far. As you can see, it’s easier and easier to render the pieces because you already have a basis and saved different types of gradients.

23. The Tank

The tank is a very important piece and almost every time it defines the bike through its shape and dimensions. Mine has 3 planes and 3 different gradients with 3 directions. Don’t be afraid to change directions because when you go from negative to positive as my tank shows it, it’s better to change direction because the light will look different.

The seat is very important too. Follow the same direction for gradient as we did for the tail. As you can see the windscreen has blue on it; the seat has also some blue. So later on we will add some "blue light" here and there to give the impression that the sky is reflected on the bike.

25. The Final Work

Now finish the body by doing the intake. Don’t forget the headlight support and some other areas you maybe forgot.

26. Blue Light

Start appling the "blue light" on the fenders first. Just copy the fender, cut it and trim it however you want and apply a blue/white gradient. Then just change the MODE and the TRANSPARENCY if necessary. This way you get a soft and transparent blue light.

27. More Blue

For the tail I have duplicated the blue gradient for better understanding the technique.

28. Almost Done

At last the tank. It has already a pretty sculpural shape so I won’t break it anymore with another layer of blue. So I will just copy the tank and paste it in place. Apply the same blue/white gradient as shown. Now on the main line of the tank we want some white reflection. To do that, just uncover the previous tank by moving some points with DIRECT SELECTION TOOL (A). Now you have a white stripe which defines your shape even more.

29. Final Touches

Time to do the final touch ups, like the shadow from the back of the exhaust pipes. Also put your bike on the ground by building a rectangle. Make use of the DIRECT SELECTION TOOL (A) to stretch and modify it. Then go to FILTER/BLUR/GAUSSIAN BLUR and play with it.

30. The End

On white, the bike is blending to much with the backround so make a black backround with a White/black gradient set on RADIAL. That’s it! Have fun with what you learned from here!

Final result