Toolbar

To the left is the toolbar. You'll see that the most frequently used tools are circled. You should also become familiar with the tools that expand from the pen tool (click and hold on the pen tool and a set of additional tools will appear to the side of it.)

Shortcut Keys

Space - while creating the lineart you will be zoomed into the picture a lot. To move around the screen easily without having to choose the Hand Tool from the toolbar each and every time, pressing and holding down the space bar will temporarily switch to the move tool, and you can drag your screen to where you want it. When you release the spacebar, it returns to the tool you were using before.

P - the pen tool is a very handy tool for making long curved lines. Pressing p on the keyboard will select the pen tool from the toolbar. What I most frequently use it for, however, is to end a current line and start a new one. When you create a curve and are finished with that curve, press the p key and the next point you click will begin a new curve.

OPEN
File > Open and select the pencil sketch file that you scanned and saved. Illustrator will open the file as a rasterized image inside the Illustrator Page. The image will already be selected and will be surrounded by a box with a handle on each corner.

RESIZE
The image may be larger or smaller then the page size, so you will probably need to resize it. Shift+Click on one of the handles and drag to increase or decrease the image size until it fits inside the page.

LOCK
With the image still selected, Lock the image in place. (This prevents it from being selected and moved later) To lock the image, press Ctrl+2 or 'Object > Lock'

LAYERS
Creat a new layer where the actual lineart will be created. If the original sketch, and the lineart are on two different layers, it makes it easier to turn off the sketch and see what your lineart looks like on it's own.

If the layers window is not already open, choose 'Window > Show Layers'. Click on the small button in the bottom of the layers window to create a New Layer. You may rename this layer to Lineart, but it is not necessary. (to rename a layer, simply double click on it, and a dialog box will appear where you can change the name)

Brushes

If the Brushes Window is not already visible, choose 'Window > Show Brushes'. In the top right corner of the brushes window, is a small arrow. Click this arrow and a drop-down menu appears. Make sure that View by Name and Show Art Brushes are both checked. (I have all of mine checked by default.)

The brush that you will be using most is called Tapered Stroke. The default for Tappered Stroke makes it very thick though, so we'll be making several versions of it, each with a smaller width setting.

If you are using Illustrator 9, 10, or 11 you probably don't have "Tapered Stroke" you have Tapered Round and Tapered Sharp. To get to the Tapered brushes, click on Window > Brush Libraries > and choose Artistic Sample.

What I do is choose the Tapered Round and drag it into the main brushes window and dupilicate it from there. I find that method the easiest to keep track of things. Unfortunetly Illustrator doesn't remember any settings (they are specific to each file) so you will have to do this step everytime you start a new picture.

Click on the Tapered Stroke Brush and drag it down, over the New Brush button at the bottom of the window. This creates a duplicate of the brush. Now double click on the new brush to bring up it's options.

Change the width from 100% to 20%, and change the name to Tapered Stroke 20. Test the line to see it's width compared with your drawing. If this looks too small (this will be the widest brush) then change the width to 25% or 30%.

Duplicate the brush again, and open it's options window. This time change the width to 18% or 15%, and change the name of the brush accordingly.

Repeat this again and again until you have a decent selection of brush widths. I usually use these sizes: 20, 15, 12, 10, 8.

To get the best look with your lineart, it is important to vary the lines where appropriate. Some lines should be thinner then others, while other lines are best when thick.

The best thing about the tapered stroke brush is that it goes from thick for the length of the line, to thin on the edges, creating a much smoother and more gradual stroke then when all the lines are the same thickness the whole length.

The primary feature in Illustrator 8 and above that is missing from version 7 and under, are the brushes. There is no tapered stroke in the older versions of Illustrator.