Skip to main content

Using a Perspective Grid in Adobe Illustrator

Lesson 47 from: Adobe Illustrator Creative Cloud: Essentials for Creating Projects

Brian Wood

Using a Perspective Grid in Adobe Illustrator

Lesson 47 from: Adobe Illustrator Creative Cloud: Essentials for Creating Projects

Brian Wood

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

47. Using a Perspective Grid in Adobe Illustrator

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

01:23
2

What is Adobe Illustrator?

06:24
3

Explore the Interface

11:45
4

Create and Save New Documents

07:03
5

Zoom and Navigate

07:23
6

Working with Artboards

18:11
7

Introduction to Layers

18:53
8

Rulers and Guides

09:05
9

Shapes and Drawing

45:27
10

Aligning and Combining Shapes

15:31
11

Pen Tool

30:59
12

Manipulating Stroke and Fill

14:39
13

Creating and Editing with Color

17:36
14

Painting with Gradients

10:36
15

Getting Started with Patterns

08:11
16

Adding Text To Your Document

08:43
17

Formatting Text

11:35
18

Strokes and Variable Strokes in Adobe Illustrator

16:55
19

Rotating Objects in Adobe Illustrator

08:42
20

Effects and the Appearance Panel in Adobe Illustrator

10:58
21

Adding Photo Images in Adobe Illustrator

12:43
22

Working with Linked Content in Adobe Illustrator

10:14
23

Packaging your Project for Handoff in Adobe Illustrator

04:28
24

Best Formats to Save Your Files

14:35
25

Select Like a Pro: Layers, Groups, & Other Unique Tools

33:57
26

Edit Paths Like a Pro in Adobe Illustrator

08:41
27

Editing Paths: Pen Tool in Adobe Illustrator

03:31
28

Creating & Applying Brushes to Artwork in Adobe Illustrator

18:21
29

Editing Paths: Knife & Scissor Tool in Adobe Illustrator

03:09
30

Editing Paths: Join Tool in Adobe Illustrator

10:46
31

Editing Paths: Isolation Mode in Adobe® Illustrator®

02:11
32

Pen Tool Shortcuts in Adobe Illustrator

16:44
33

Other Drawing Tools & Methods in Adobe Illustrator

07:05
34

Transforming Techniques in Adobe Illustrator

05:35
35

Shortcut to Reflecting Artwork in Adobe Illustrator

02:19
36

Get to Know Your Appearance Panel in Adobe Illustrator

17:42
37

Exploring Effects in Adobe Illustrator

10:01
38

Work Smarter with Graphic Styles in Adobe Illustrator

04:50
39

Color Inspiration in Adobe Illustrator

09:34
40

Type Effects in Adobe Illustrator

11:18
41

Masking Your Artwork in Adobe Illustrator

13:40
42

Using Creative® Cloud® Libraries in Adobe® Illustrator®

15:47
43

Capture Artwork with Creative Cloud Apps & Adobe Illustrator

12:21
44

Tracing Raster Images in Adobe Illustrator

13:40
45

Blending Artwork in Adobe Illustrator

12:47
46

Using Symbols in Adobe Illustrator

10:47
47

Using a Perspective Grid in Adobe Illustrator

09:05
48

Crash Recovery in Adobe Illustrator

08:45
49

GPU Performance in Adobe Illustrator

03:51
50

Curvature Tool in Adobe Illustrator

06:49
51

App Integration in Adobe Illustrator

11:52
52

Creative Cloud Libraries in Adobe Illustrator App

04:42
53

Shaper Tool in Adobe Illustrator

06:06
54

Smart Guides in Adobe Illustrator

01:31
55

Text Enhancements in Adobe Illustrator

02:11
56

SVG Export in Adobe Illustrator

06:50

Lesson Info

Using a Perspective Grid in Adobe Illustrator

I want to show you. We're going to take, and we're going to put some artwork on the actual backpack, and we're gong to do it in perspective, okay? Perspective grid is actually really cool. It's very effective. There's a lot of things we can do with it, and what I want you to do is just sit back for one second, and I'm going to show you what I'm talking about, okay? And then I'm going to have you do it if you want to follow along. When we work in Illustrator we can actually create objects in perspective, okay? If I'm going to open up a brand new document just to prove something or show something here. If I take a look over here on the left hand side, you're going to see that we actually have a perspective grid tool sitting right over here in the tools panel. If I click on the perspective grid tool, just to show you, it's going to open up our, basically our two-point perspective grid. In Illustrator we can have a one-point, two-point, and three-point perspective grid that we can align ar...

twork to. That's what we're doing. We're just basically taking things we create, and snapping it to the grid, and letting it put it in perspective. So in it's simplest form, you guys, if you come out here, you can use this to create a little box. You can use it to create an entire cityscape. You could do whatever you want with this. Doesn't have to be the entire bunch of artwork that you use with the grid. It can be used in conjunction with other artwork. Watch this. I'm going to go over here, and I'm going to select a rectangle. I'm going to go to the rectangle tool. There is this little widget right up here, which I pick which grid I want to draw on. And I always forget to do this, okay. You got to pick. You got to say, "Do you want to draw on the left side? Do you want to draw on the right side? Do you want to draw on basically the horizontal, going like that? Or do you want to draw on no grid? Do you want to make something that is not in perspective?" Okay? I'm going to click on left grid, and if I come down here you can see. Watch what happens as I draw a rectangle now. This is pretty cool isn't it? So it's actually putting that into perspective as we draw. Now if I pick another side for instance I say, "Let's draw on the right grid now." It all kind of snaps together, and you can say, "Eh, let's draw on the right side now." So we've got ourselves basically a perspective box. Okay? It's pretty cool. There's some really great things we can do with this. Well, the way we're going to use this is dead simple. I just want to take a little bit of artwork, and we're going to put it on the side of the backpack. Okay, it's going to be really, really pretty simple to do, but it's very effective. It's something we can make it look a little bit more realistic. So what I want to do is I want to put a little piece of artwork right on the side here in that little panel right there. If your apple is covering up that part of the backpack, let's move the backpack out of the way. So I'll just drag my selection tool, and move it out of the way. Now we need to get some artwork that we're going to use. And, actually, if you guys look in your symbols panel, do you see this little ribbon-y, weird, circle-y thing over here? Okay, we're going to just use that. We have that to work with. In the lesson files I actually have a little like compass wheel that we can use, but we're going to get this done this way. First thing we need to do is we're going to make that grid show up, okay? So let's start there. Come over to the tools panel, and you're going to see perspective grid tool. Select that. By doing that the grid immediately appears out there, okay? We can only have one grid in the document, but you can move it around. It's kind of neat. This is going to be a little bit wacky, but we've got a lot going on here, okay? So it's going to be a little bit harder to work with. Here's what I want you to do. Zoom out a little bit, okay? Zoom out just a tiny bit. I'm going to use view, zoom out, and you might need to do that a couple times. Here's what I want you to see. I want you to see on the grid there are these little white diamonds down here on the left. I want you to be able to see those guys right there, okay? We are not going into the grid. This thing is insane. There are so many options and so many things you can set. I actually have it devoted as part of the chapter in the book and blah, but here's the two things we're going to do. If you look down here you're going to see that there is a little diamond down at the lower left corner. That one lets you move the whole thing, so let's do that. What we're going to do is we're going to shift it over. Now I want you guys to do this. We're going to pretend that the backpack is going to be in perspective, so we're going to put the grid on the backpack. We want the two planes to kind of go on the edge of the backpack. Do you see what I'm saying? Sort of like that. There's the side of the backpack and the side of the backpack. Okay, just get it close. It doesn't need to be perfect. Don't worry about that. All right, now you might see that the actual ... These lines going this way and that way aren't following the backpack. These two planes aren't following it exactly. Can you see? Look right here. You see this little point right here? It's a little vanishing point. You could take that little point on the left side, and move it left and right. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get these little planes to kind of follow the backpack, so I'm looking at the bottom of the backpack here and trying to get this line to kind of line up. Make it perpendicular, or parallel rather, sorry. Something like that. I could, if I wanted to, I could do the same thing on the right. There's another one on the right over here. I could drag that over and say, "Eh, let's try and match this." But we don't really need to do that. I just want to get the left one. In my case it's blue, that left plane. To kind of follow the backpack's side, okay? Once you get it there, I mean we're done. We can just now put the artwork on there, okay? Come to your symbols panel. You should see that ribbon piece of artwork there, symbol. Just drag it out. Now here's the thing about symbols: you can't drag it right onto this grid thing. You gotta just drop it somewhere, so just take that ribbon piece, that ribbon symbol, drag it right out, and just drop it somewhere over here for instance, okay? Now if we want to put that on the grid ... If we can do this for anything ... Well, almost anything. You cannot do this for raster images. You can't put the raster images on a grid, but if we take shapes, text, symbols, any of this stuff we can, now that we've got it, drag it right on the grid. Okay, you gotta use a special tool to do it though, okay. This is what everybody forgets, and I forget. Come to the perspective grid tool right here. Click and hold down, and you're going to see the perspective selection tool It makes sense, but you cannot use the selection tool, the regular one, to interact with the grid. If you do, if you take stuff and move it on the grid, it's totally pulled of the grid and it doesn't work anymore. You gotta use this one. This is the selection tool specifically for the grid. Choose perspective selection tool. Now what we can do is we can grab anything and drag it, slap it on the grid, and it will put it into perspective. The only other thing we need to do is tell it which grid to put it on. Come up here to this widget, right up in the corner, and make sure that you have left gird selected. Try clicking in the box. You'll see you can click on each grid and kind of change it around a little bit, but make sure the one on the left there is selected. Come to the symbol and simply drag it on to the side of the backpack. So let me move up just a little bit here so we can see this. Symbol, drag it on, and we are now in perspective. There we go. If you want to resize it, it's a little tricky. You might want to zoom in. It's hard to see it because it is blue on blue you guys, but I can use my shift key, and I can drag and make it a little bigger, a little smaller, that type of thing. And if I click off I can see it right there. I now have it in perspective. Like I said, you can do this for just about any artwork you want. If you go out in there and type up a bunch of text, you can do the same thing. Use that selection tool, drag it right on the grid, and it will slap to the different plane that you're working on, and that's it. That's perspective. The first time I tried to teach this I had somebody build a city, and I was like, "How often do you build cities in Illustrator?" Like how often do you draw like a ... I was like, "What else can you?" Oh, yeah, hello. We actually in the ... Oh, I don't have it in there anymore. In the last version of the book we had an entire chapter on perspective, and we actually did product boxes for makeup. So we created these perspective boxes, and we put on the different artwork on there. It was actually kind of cool It looked pretty good, but anyway ... So perspective is a good thing. It can get really complicated really fast. It is quite fun. There is only one grid. If you need to put perspective on another object, maybe on another artboard, you can take this grid, and if you go back to the perspective tool, you can actually take that grid and just drag it over to the other artboard, stick it on there, and what's going to happen is it's going to basically leave that in place right there, that artwork, and just keep it as is in perspective.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Project Files Part 1
Project Files Part 2

Ratings and Reviews

KATIE Y
 

I am a pretty computer literate person but an Ai beginner i.e. I am completely new to the Creative Cloud/Adobe Illustrator. (This is also the first time I've used CreativeLive.) I think this course it is fantastic. The pace is good as is the content which progressed logically and covers all the basics you'd hope it would. The course is 2 full days' worth of material but it is broken down into segments so you can revisit or skip through as you need to. The presenter is really personable and easy to watch (even for me, a Londoner!). I would also say I think it is pretty good value for money -- I am currently enrolled on a part time course, basically doing the same sort of stuff, and I have to say this is better and a bit cheaper! I definitely recommend it to you!

jackflash
 

A brilliantly designed course. it's almost magic. It's everything you hope for in a follow-along software class. Brian Wood has engineered it so that you start on a project that just needs basics, and then you move on to more & more complicated projects, and almost without realizing it you've learned Illustrator. This doesn't just happen -- Wood has clearly put a LOT of effort into creating this course. Here's one trivial example: he doesn't overload you with a lot of keyboard shortcuts right at the beginning -- you start with the actions themselves, using the (admittedly tedious but easy) pulldown menus, and then after you're comfortable with what you're doing, he'll throw in the shortcut. It may seem obvious, but so many instructors feel they have to give you an extensive foundation of definitions, shortcuts, interfaces, etc., before you ever do anything. Good stuff to know, but you'll never remember it. Wood has you up and working almost immediately. And he's a joy to listen to, at a perfect pace. Highly recommended.

Philippe LIENARD
 

Top course. Very well explained, clear, good examples, pleasant teacher. I like it and recommend it. One suggestion, it would be nice to have a detailed table of content of the course in the material. For instance, it took me quite a while to find back the part of the course where how to make a gear was explained.

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES