Illustrate Grapes

• Software: Inkscape (or Adobe Illustrator)
• Level: Intermediate
• Subject: Grapes

In this tutorial, you will look at the process of creating a vector illustration of grapes. Drawing grapes is quite easy - with all the oval shapes put together. Applying color renders on the other hand can become a bit tedious, and it helps to keep the color palette organized.

Lineart

Try drawing the grapes bunch in GIMP (or Adobe Photoshop) and get the general idea of the color palette with respect to the light source. Import it into your vector editor of choice (Inkscape or Illustrator).

You can download the above color study if you want: Grapes - Study (PNG format)

Reduce the opacity of the imported image to around 40% to 50% and use a polygon tool and mark out all the outline key points.

Using the node edit tool ( [F2] in Inkscape), shape the polygon tool exactly around the grapes bunch using the underlying image as a guide.

Draw another shape outlining all the inner shapes of the grape fruit. I drew them one by one using polygon tool and then performed a Union operation on them. It is show as a red line above but the color is not important as we will be making the stroke width zero after we apply the colors we want.

Flats

Apply the darkest tone to the outer shape, and the next lighter tone to the inner shapes. After that, turn off the outline of both these shapes.

Before we proceed with the rendering, observe the color palette we would be using. For the five/six grapes that are directly in the light, we are using the color palette which has richer variations (P1). For the ones in the shadow area, we are using the second palette (P2) which has lesser gradations.

Rendering Shadow Area

Rendering the shadow area is qutie easy. Just create concentric shapes for each fruit and apply the brightest tone in second palette (P2). To get multiple gradations, have each of those layers at 50% opacity.

Rendering Light

Rendering the lighter areas is similar to the one in last step - using the tones from palette (P1) on concentric shapes, each at 50% opacity.

Since you have a lot more color tones in this area, remember to make those concentric shapes much tighter and closer to each other. This step requires some amount of patience.

Finish up

Use those two highlight tones sparingly, and you are done.

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Do use the comment section below for questions and posting your artwork done using this tutorial.