My recent article for CreativePro.com, Illustrator WOW! Techniques: Flexible Shading and Highlighting Effects, is now posted on their website. It expands on the coloring process using the Adobe Illustrator vector art Shapebuilder tool described in my Gallery page in the Illustrator WOW! CS6 book. 

Would you like to add richer shading and highlighting effects to your vector art in Adobe Illustrator, and be able to quickly edit colors and have all these effects update instantly? I thought so.

The process starts with artwork that uses brushed strokes which have been converted to outlines. You then need to select all the art and fill in the enclosed area with flat color using the Shapebuilder tool (for a detailed Gallery explaining how I do this, see the Illustrator CS6 WOW! or Illustrator CC WOW! books).

I color my artwork with flat colors using Global Swatches, and then use these Global Swatches along with Layer Effects to add shading and highlight effects. These two techniques combined allow me to quickly experiment with color changes, as well as adding a richer look to the shading and highlights in the artwork. Finally, I save myself even more time by saving the document as custom template.

Head over to the full article on CreativePro for all the details. And keep an eye out this summer for more George Coghill advanced vector art techniques in the Adobe Illustrator CC WOW! book from Peachpit Press.