final image (4)

Premium Tutorial: Retro Pin-up Girl

retro girl

In this tutorial you’ll learn to create a retro pin-up girl in Adobe Illustrator. We’ll use simple shapes, Pathfinder palette, some different Width Profiles in the Stroke palette, which are easy to apply in other illustrations. So let’s jump in and begin creating!

Difficulty: Advanced
Requirements: Adobe Illustrator

What will you get?

    • Instant download of PDF e-book (47 pages, 48 steps)
    • Comes with Ai file for easy reference
    • Detailed step by step tutorial to draw a nice realistic retro pin-up girl

Tutorial Preview:

Create a New document

1. Launch Illustrator and then press (Ctrl + N) to create a New document. Select Pixels from the Units drop-down menu, enter 750 in the width box and 730 in the height box then click on the Advanced button. Select RGB, Screen (72ppi) and make sure that the Align New Objects to Pixel Grid box is unchecked before you click OK.

retro girl

Make a Sketch

2. At the beginning let's draw a sketch. You can draw it on the paper or directly in Illustrator.

retro girl

Create the Face

3. When I'm ready to start my layers, I'll label my first layer as "Sketch" and lock the layer to make sure that I won't accidentally move or delete the sketch. We'll be loosely following this as our guideline.

retro girl

4. Let's draw the contour of our character. First, create a New Layer and change the layer name to "Face". Next pick the Pen Tool (P) and create the objects of the face like you see in the images below.

retro girl

retro girl

retro girl

5. Select the first object created in the step 4 and fill it with R=246, G=209, B=206, then remove the stroke color of the resulting shape. Reselect the newly created shape and make a copy (Ctrl +C, Ctrl +F) of it. Add a 4px stroke (R=0, G=0, B=0) for the copy and remove the fill color of it, then apply the Width Profile 2 for the resulting object.

retro girl

6. Now, follow the sequence of images and fill color for the eyebrows, eyes, nose and lips. You should end up with something like the final image.

retro girl

retro girl

retro girl

retro girl

retro girl

retro girl

retro girl

retro girl



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