Adobe Illustrator beginner hand on paper graphic tutorial
By: Carolyn Wang
Tags: Beginner, Graphic Design, Graphics, Tutorial, Professional

You’ll be able to create this graphic after this tutorial! Image Credit: Author

Are you looking for the perfect, non-copyrighted graphic to put in your next article, website page, or newspaper publication? Perhaps you have spent hours searching online for a graphic on Google to no avail because of copyright infringement issues. Or simply put, you are tired of relying on graphics created by other people and want to learn how to create one yourself, even if your art skill set ranges from stick figures to lopsided circles. Well, you’ve come to the right place.

On contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to be an amazing artist to create award-winning google search graphics. In fact, modern technology has made it so easy that all you really need now is the right software and some patience, even if you’re a senior, a programmer, a businessman, or a high schooler like me. Today, I’ll be demonstrating how to create a hand on paper graphic with Adobe Illustrator (AI) for beginners completely from scratch. No altered pictures from the internet. No mad art and designer skills. No copyright issues. Just you, your hand, your phone camera, AI, and a keenness to create.

To begin, I want to launch Illustrator and open a blank file (File → New). For purposes of this demonstration, I’ll be making the dimensions 5 inches by 5 inches.

Adjust the width and height to 5 inches and press create.

Once I have created the file, a 5 x 5 blank screen like the image below appears. On the left hand side, there is a toolbar with tools. You can hover over each tool to see their names. On the top you can see the menu bar. On the right side, there is a panel with many tabs opened, including Stroke, Gradient, Properties, Color, and Layers. If one of these do not show up on your screen (ie. Layers), you can go to Window → Layers, and it will pop up on the side.

New Illustrator File

Before I begin, I want you to understand what Layers are, because they are vital in creating clean looking graphics.

Imagine a “Layer” as a transparent piece of paper. You can draw on it, color it, and manipulate it as you wish. You can also add another transparent paper on top of the first one and draw on it. Then, even if you remove this second paper off, the first layer’s drawing remains intact. You can continue adding layer on top of layer on top of layer. The drawings of the layer on the top will cover the drawings of the layer on the bottom.

Got it? Great, let’s move on.

Normally, if you were an exceptional artist, your next step would be to begin drawing your design. But for the rest of us, we can take a simpler route. The graphic we are aiming to create has a hand drawing on a piece of paper. So take your phone, grab a pen and paper, position your hand the way you want it to look in your graphic, and snap a picture. Here’s mine:

Image Credit: Author

Once you have the picture, upload it onto your computer. Then use File → Open to place your image into Illustrator. Move the photo around until it is in your desired position and size. Then name the layer on the right “handphoto” or another precise name so you know that this layer has your photo on it.

Import image, place image, and rename layer

Next, press the “plus” button on the lower right corner of Illustrator to add a new layer on TOP of our previous “hand photo” layer and name it “outline.” Next to the “hand photo” layer there should be an eye button. Press the lock on the right of the eye button to lock the “hand photo” layer. This makes sure you do not accidently move the reference photo on the “hand photo” layer and mess up your artwork.

Lock previous layer, add new layer, and rename new layer to “outline”

Now, make sure you have clicked the “outline” layer. Then, using the keyboard shortcut “p” or clicking the pen tool on the tool panel 3rd down from the left, trace over your hand. Once you finish, toggle the eye icon next to the lock on the “hand photo” layer so it is off. You should result in a traced out “cartoon version” of your hand as shown below:

Click “outline layer”, press pen tool, and trace over hand

Toggle eye icon so it disappears

Awesome, already looking pretty good!

As the image we are trying to replicating as a graphic shows a hand marking a proposition on a piece of paper, let’s draw a piece of paper! Since the paper is underneath the hand, add a new layer called “paper” and move it underneath the “outline” layer. Using the pen tool, draw a rectangular piece of paper. Any slightly rectangle shape will do. (You do not have to make it exactly like mine. Paper comes in all shapes and sizes!)

Add “paper” layer, select pen tool, and draw paper

Notice that the paper goes through the hand for now. That’s okay –– our next step is coloring the hand on top of the “paper” layer, so it’ll be blocked out soon enough.

First, add a new layer and name it “hand color,” and drag it layer BELOW the “outline” layer. This will make it easier for you to color in your hand without coloring out of the lines (like your kindergarten self portrait picture.) Next, press the “brush” button on the tool panel, or the keyboard shortcut “b.” Change the stroke color located on the left bottom to your desired skin color, change the brush width to your desired size (press “[” or “]”), and color in your hand. Once you finish this, change the stroke color to your favorite shade of blue and color the pen in the picture. To see this visually, follow the steps in the image below.

Add “hand color” layer, drag it below “outline” layer, use brush tool to color in hand

If you would like to make the image have more depth, add some quick shadows (i.e. darker strokes) as shown by step #6.

Now that you have your hand and pen colored in, our next step is putting text on the paper to make it seem more realistic. To do so, first create a new layer titled “paper text” and put it between the “hand color” and “paper” layers. Then, press the “Text” tool, type your desired text, adjust the font, size, and color, and drag it over your paper. (You can do this by clicking “character” on the top panel.) Adjust the text anyway you wish. You can also choose to add filler lines, boxes, or any other text, shape, or image you wish on your paper. Because my original image was voting for CA propositions, I will put a title, some lines, and some checkboxes to mirror the real ballot.

Finish coloring in the hand and pen. Add words, numbers, and boxes using the “T” and line tools. The coloring on the last few pictures might seem slightly different because I altered my computer screen’s hue.

Last but not least, add some flair by putting in a vibrant background to make your artwork pop! To do so, create one final layer and color in the back with the brush tool or pen tool. I colored my background blue.

Color the background with brush or pen tool.

And … there you have it! 🎉 🎊 Congratulations on making it through this Adobe Illustrator tutorial; I hope you have learned a thing or two! Key takeaways from this process include the importance of layering, utilizing all the different tools such as the brush tool and pen tool, and staying persistent as you journey through your own world of graphic making! As an assistant graphics editor for my school’s newspaper, I know it can be tough starting out with seemingly complex programs like Adobe Illustrator, but in the end it’s all quite simple. Just keep practicing and know that any beginner can create simple and amazing graphics if they put their mind to it.