How to create an airbrush grain or stipple effect in Adobe Illustrator

[@Lifesaverquirky]

Seriously you are a great guy. I bought a course from some fancy illustrator that I admired and it was such a disappointment. Thank you for this great tutorial, you are a true artist. Have a great day, kind regards from Denmark.

[@russgrayillustration8734]

Hi Cela, I'm actually happy to hear that; all I ever really hope is that this is at all beneficial to someone. So I'm glad to hear it is. Thanks for your comment, and I hope this ends up being helpful in your own work.

[@ItaloMuniz16]

It's funny how you can tackle a problem in different ways. My route would be creating the gradient and then Object > rasterize > bitmap. Same same but yours is better. I learned something new today, thanks a bunch!

[@russgrayillustration8734]

Hey Italo! Yes, that's great. Thanks for your additional idea. I also learned something new. Only limitation I could possibly see of the rasterize>bitmap method is that it seems you are not able to apply color to the bitmap, without perhaps overlaying a layer and changing the transparency mode to "lighten"; but maybe I'm wrong? Either way, you are right, I love that there are so many different ways to do anything in this software. I'm sure there are countless others still untapped.

[@mkopke]

This was very helpful, thank you! BTW, nice WB posters! Suscribed!

[@russgrayillustration8734]

Glad it was helpful! Thank you.

[@BoiNachos]

I love your videos Russ. Thank you for the value you provide. I was wondering - for things such as your meadowlark pharmacy cards or your star wars illustration work, what is your work flow? As in, do you sketch on another software or use illustrator? I know it has to be quite high quality work to be printed large scale (for star wars for example) so what is your routine for those kinds of illustrations? Keep up the great videos 🙏🏻😊

[@russgrayillustration8734]

So my process depends on the project, but generally when I do sketches, they are in Photoshop, using a Wacom Cintiq tablet. For actual execution following the sketch, it's almost always Illustrator followed by Photoshop.