With time Adobe Illustrator has become the standard application when it comes to illustration design. Artists, illustrators and graphic designers use Illustrator to produce vector-based graphics which — contrary to raster-based editors like Adobe Photoshop — can be rescaled with ease without losing out on quality.

On the other hand, to master Adobe Illustrator isn’t simple; and the creating process of specialized illustrations involves both time and tolerance. Hence, tutorials can turn out to be time-savers as they show precisely what has to be done to make specialized illustrations and how masters of illustration really manage to do their magic. Listed below are a few tutorials which would be of great help to people just starting with Illustrator.

1. Realistic Highlights in Illustrator

A short tutorial on creating realistic highlights in Illustrator using clipping masks. The tutorial includes creating a path, adding a gradient and creating a clipping mask.

2. Illustrator 101 – Opacity Masks

A short tutorial on how to create a shape with a highlight using an opacity mask and how you can use opacity masks in your designs.

3. Illustrator 101 – The Blend Tool

A quick overview of how the blend tool works in building out shapes and design elements in Illustrator. It also includes several techniques which can be applied.

4. Working with Illustrator “Art” Brushes: Options and Adjustments

This tutorial covers numerous aspects that affect the way Illustrator brushes are used, mainly “Art brushes”.

5. Quickly Change Fills and Strokes

This tutorial focuses on some Fill and Stroke functions, with the keyboard shortcuts following in parenthesis to make working on Illustrator more efficient.

6. Illustrator’s Pen Tool: The Comprehensive Guide

This complete tutorial focuses on introducing you to features, shortcuts, and methods for working with Adobe’s most important tool – the Pen Tool.

7. Mixing Colors in Adobe Illustrator

This tutorial deals with colors and is aimed at the excessive use of black in mixing colors.

8. Gradient Mesh Tool in Illustrator

This tutorial provides you with a few tips that will help enhance your Mesh work. Additionally it includes a good workflow to get excellent results with this tool. It also offers a close look at creating a layer inside the detailed file of a meshed boot.

9. Illustrator’s Type Tool: A Comprehensive Introduction

This guide gives a thorough introduction to the type tools. It covers the basics of a large amount of Illustrator functionality, including keyboard shortcuts, keyboard controls, panels and lots more.

10. Illustrator Tutorial – 3D Lighted Text Effect

This tutorial shows how Illustrator can execute design tasks usually reserved for Photoshop or other raster programs. This tutorial first shows you how to make some 3D text, which can then be applied to a few art brushes so that a tidy, innovative spacey effect can be achieved.

11. Transition Between Two Objects

This tutorial focuses on forming an even transition between objects by merging the objects in Adobe® Illustrator®. It teaches you how to select two objects, blend them and then curve the blend path.

12. Abstract Background

This tutorial shows you how to make an abstract background with Illustrator Blend Tool.

13. Illustrator: How to Make Custom Swooshes, Swirls, and Curls

This tutorial shows you how to create your own curls and swooshes easily in Illustrator. It also teaches you how to create a custom brush to make these shapes a lot quicker.

14. Duplicate a Shape Using the Rotate Tool

This short tutorial aims at teaching you how to copy a shape using Illustrator’s Rotate Tool.

15. From Sketch to Vector Illustration

This is a thorough tutorial which covers topics like Sketching, What resolution to scan your sketch, How to set up your Illustrator file, Tips and Techniques to digitally inking your sketch using vector lines, and tips and techniques to coloring your vector illustration.

16. Transform Again in Illustrator

This is a 6 step tutorial which focuses on how to use the Transform Again Tool in Illustrator and create amazing effects starting from one simple shape.

17. Automotive Cutaway/ See-through Car Illustration Tutorial

This lesson concentrates on creating a 3-Point Perspective-view drawing of a generic car, working from plan and elevation view reference only.

18. ArtBoard Tool (CS4)

This tutorial teaches you how to use the Artboard tool in Illustrator to save time and follow smooth production flow. It also teaches you how to toggle between your pages and how to have multiple design projects of the same category in the same file, which is an efficient way to keep your file directory from having numerous Illustrator files.

19. Crop Marks in Illustrator Tutorial

This tutorial focuses on the usage of crop marks and how to create them in Illustrator CS3 and Illustrator CS4 method by using the Artboard tool and conversion.

20. Dashed Lines Tutorial

This tutorial is a guide on how to create dashed lines in Illustrator which can be applied to anything such as shapes, lines or images.

21. Placing Images in Illustrator

Discover how to place images professionally using Illustrator’s “place” tool. This tutorial includes why you should avoid copying and pasting images into Illustrator documents without using the “place” tool. It’s useful for creating brochures or other projects that contain text and images.

22. Global Colour Swatches

Global color swatches is a function which lets you renew colors of various objects quickly. This tutorial aims at teaching you how to save time by applying global color swatches to your projects.

23. Rounded Corners Tutorial

This is a basic tutorial on how to give your lines and shapes rounded corners.

24. Stylish Vector Flower

This Adobe Illustrator tutorial teaches you how to create stylish vector/line flower using the Blend Tool and is good for making background and large print illustration.

25. Beginner Illustrator Tutorial – Create a Vector RSS Icon

This Adobe Illustrator tutorial covers the basic steps involved in creating a vector RSS icon and contains a variety of useful techniques that can be put into practice in future creations.

26. Illustrator Tutorial: Designing a Sleek Pencil Icon

This tutorial focuses on how to complete the design of a sleek pencil using Adobe Illustrator CS3.

27. Illustrator Beginner’s Series 5: Using the Eclipse Tool

This is the fifth tutorial in the Illustrator Beginner’s series which covers using the Ellipse tool to make eyes.

28. Illustrator’s Beginner’s Series 2: Pen Tool Basics

This tutorial is the second part in the Adobe Illustrator Beginner’s series which concentrates on drawing with the Pen tool and also gives a short introduction to Illustrator’s two color options – the Fill color (the color inside a shape) and the Stroke color (or the outline color).

29. Tutorial: How to Create a Television Icon

This is an easy step-by-step tutorial which shows you how to create a retro television icon with a few basic shapes and gradients. The tutorial includes: Using Offset Path on an object, learn to use Gradients to create surface texture and depth and Create a reflection using an Opacity Mask.

30. 20 More Useful Adobe Illustrator Menu Tips

This tutorial covers 20 useful tips on Illustrator’s menu commands including, Document Setup, Quick Spell Check, Lock/Unlock, Zoom for 3D Objects, Switching from Illustrator to Corel Draw and many more.