DO IT YOURSELF CLIPART

This was done with Illustrator 10. I kept the technical stuff to a minimum, to give the basic steps only. Your own graphics program may have different terminology, which you might have to click around to translate.

Something simple like this takes maybe 10 or 15 minutes to do. There's just too many instances when it takes longer than that to find an oddball clipart subject like, for instance, a propane tank. Knowing how to create your own from scratch can make life a whole lot simpler.

I hope this is helpful and not too confusing. Putting this stuff into words is a trick all in itself!

Here's a couple more images to add onto the above. The image on the left shows the same image in wireframe, so you can see better how the end product looks to a plotter.

The image on the right shows suggestion of shadow, which I whipped up just to remind you that you can embellish your clip art any way you want. That's one of the beauties of making your own.

You can never find just what you need anyway. It's always the wrong style, the wrong shape, wrong something.

Just start with the basic shapes, and then work in just enough detail to identify it as the what it is. Leave out tiny details and thin lines if they aren't necessary. As you render, think to yourself, "do I really want to weed that later?"

The same principles apply for designing for vinyl as for paint, so far as detail goes. The further away the sign will be from the viewer, the less important small details will be.

email.....Don Coplen

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