Ok It’s our second day for the tutorial, this time we will do the colors, shadings and highlights. Let’s begin and open up our Illustrator again and let’s get back to where we are last time.

Hmm…lets see, ah yes this is the one.

Color Flats

Now from this state we’ll add in some colors, first let’s start with the nose, click the nose and from the color picker choose a carroty orange. By the way the color mode I used in this tutorial is CMYK, which would be ready for printing If you want it to be printed. Mine is C=0, M=50, Y=100 K=0 or F7931D for RGB

Next we move on to the twigs, choose a brown one for these. Just type C=32 M=48 Y=76 K=20 or 967348 for RGB.

We now move to the two big lumps of snow. To clearly see the parts that you wanted to color, let’s try and use some object hiding, choose an object that you want to hide and press Ctrl + 3 now it’s hidden, try it on another. Don’t worry we’ll bring them back later, the good thing is that we can clearly see the objects that we wanted to color, choose a sky blue for the two After having the colored the body and head. Press Ctrl + Alt + 3 and there you go, the hidden objects are back, this shortcut really helped my workflow especially when trying to do some of this kind. Lets use C=32 Y=0 M=6 K=0 or for RGB.

That leaves us with the scarf as the last, let’s choose crimson red C=25 M=100 Y=100 K=0 or C0272D to compliment his hat and use the same colors as well.

So now we have made the color flats. Let’s move on to the next step

Highlights

Ok so now that we have set up the color flats, its time for some highlighting. Let’s first think of where do light would come from, in this tutorial will assume that the light is coming from above. With that in mind, let’s begin adding some highlights. We will be using some mesh tool and gradients a lot.

Let’s begin with the hat from the crown tip, pick a light gray and use the mesh tool click the at the center do the same for the brim and the red tab to produce a similar effect.

Next is the body and the head, again let’s Hide (Ctrl + 3) some objects leaving only the objects we needed. With nothing selected pick white, next is to click Mesh Tool (U) from the toolbox, Move the mouse over the body and click on the center.

Oh no the strokes are gone! Never fear mighty mouse is here! Errr…I mean Click Window > Appearance and click the little arrow and you’ll see the options to Add New Stroke. Set the weight to 3 pt and there you have it, strokes are back.

Do the same thing for the head.

Let’s continue with the nose, again with nothing selected pick a color lighter than orange nose, click the Mesh Tool and then click the middle part as shown below:

For the hands I only used the gradient tool, its just to thin to put some mesh in it

The scarf seems a tad bland; let’s add in some stripes to add more detail. Using the Pen Tool, create polygons along the scarf and leave it without any strokes, use a white fill.

Shadows

Now we move on to the shadows, this is optional if you want to add some shadows or not, but suggest you do add some because it adds depth to a piece.

We begin by Locking (Ctrl + 3) all objects, for this tutorial we will not add in all possible shadows but the obvious ones instead: nose, hands, head, hat.

For all the shadows the settings will be: a gradient from white to black and the blend mode set to multiply.

Begin creating, shadows as shown below:

Lastly, well add in a shadow below for the whole object. This one has a different setting for we will use a mesh tool instead of gradient. Create a white ellipse, pick a dark gray color, use the mesh tool and click the middle. Put it under our snowman and set the blend mode to multiply. Add a little spark on the eye.

And there you have it, our snowman.

Next day we’ll add the snowman to a background similar to what I’ve done to the post card from the first day.

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