Making a Simple Baseball Icon Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to make a Baseball icon which will resemble the one I used for my January calendar.

What You’ll Be Making:

Tools:

• Illustrator
• Strokes
• Brushes
• Slight experience w/ Illustrator

Steps:

1. A. Draw a circle with a white/gray fill. B. Draw curved secants on both sides of this circle.

2. A. Draw a shape such as an askew triangle (see picture below) and give a red fill (this will become our thread). B. Select this object, then go to Brush tab (click F5 to bring up the Brush Window) and click on the “New ___” symbol to create a new brush (see picture below). A window will pop up, choose the scatter brush option. C. A new window will pop up. For right now, just click OK.

3. A. Now select both of your curved paths. B. Then click on your new brush and you will get something as you would see below.

4. A. Go to the Brush window/tab and double-click your brush or click the Brush Settings button next to the new brush button. B. Now a window will pop up (that you’ve already seen). Click preview to see what you’re doing and adjust the spacing, size, and rotation to your choosing but be sure to make the rotation relative to path. Then click OK.

5. A. Select the two paths and group them together. B. Draw a circle of the same size as our original and move it to the front. Then select that circle and the paths, then right-click and choose Create Clipping Mask.

6 A. Select both the circle and the clipped paths and add a Drop Shadow by going to Effect>Stylize>Drop Shadow. B. Adjust numbers to your choosing. C. If you’ve followed the steps right, you should’ve got something close to this.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial.