# Advanced Techniques in Adobe Illustrator: Adding Texture in Graphic Design - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/advanced-techniques-in-adobe-illustrator-adding-texture-in-graphic-design/ [← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Graphic Design · Quick win · Rated 7 /10 # Advanced Techniques in Adobe Illustrator: Adding Texture in Graphic Design Updated August 2026 Sophia Yeshi · Graphic Designer and Illustrator Intermediate · 50 min Five specific Illustrator techniques in fifty minutes, but only if you already know the basics cold. [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fadvanced-techniques-in-adobe-illustrator-adding-texture-in-graphic-design%2F783370213) New to Skillshare? Your first month is free, enough to take this course at no cost. ## What the course actually covers Sophia Yeshi's class is built as five discrete technique modules rather than a single project walkthrough, and that structure is both its strength and its limit. Each lesson opens with a short demo, shows the tool in isolation, and closes with a prompt to practice and post to the gallery. There is no single unifying artwork built across the whole class, though the final lesson on drawing modes does show a finished illustration (a figure with a textured shirt and stippled shadow) as a worked example of several techniques stacked together. The brush lesson is the most thorough of the five. It walks through calligraphic brushes tied to a Wacom tablet's pressure sensitivity, an alternative width-profile method for people without a tablet, a pattern brush built from nothing but two overlapping rectangles bent around an arch, and a scatter brush tuned with randomized size and rotation to avoid the repetitive look of a dragged brush stroke. The pattern brush segment in particular is a genuinely clever shortcut: turning a repeating arch pattern that would otherwise require manually nudging dozens of tiles into a two-minute brush setup. The Repeat tool lesson covers grid, radial, and mirror repeats, and it earns its "underrated tool" framing by showing how a lopsided hand-drawn flower becomes a passable seamless pattern once brick offsets and spacing are adjusted, and how a single eye and eyebrow become a full symmetrical face with the mirror repeat. The opacity mask lesson demonstrates two distinct uses (revealing a halftone texture through a colored shape, and revealing a gradient through expanded text) and is careful to call out the common trap of getting stuck in mask-editing mode. ## Where it's strong and where it thins out The blend tool lesson is a highlight for anyone who has only ever used the automatic Blend Make command. It shows manual point-to-point blending between five different colored circles, then how to reverse the spine, adjust specified steps, change distance, and replace the spine to bend the blend around a custom path like a circle. This is a tool most Illustrator users touch rarely, and the demonstration of dialing steps up and down to move between visible dot-trails and a fully smooth gradient is concrete and easy to replicate. The drawing modes lesson closes the class strongly, showing Draw Inside and Draw Behind as instant clipping shortcuts that eliminate the tedious process of manually masking or reordering dozens of individual brush strokes. It is a short segment but a high-value one. The course's honesty about its own scope is a point in its favor. It explicitly assumes viewers already know Illustrator's basics and never slows down to explain fundamental navigation, panel locations, or keyboard shortcuts beyond a passing mention. That makes it efficient for its intended audience but a poor fit for anyone still building comfort with the program. There is also no cohesive final project. The five techniques stay siloed, each with its own tiny practice piece, rather than converging on one finished piece of work the way the course description's framing implies. Viewers looking for a start-to-finish illustration process should look elsewhere. As a fast reference for five specific, well-chosen intermediate techniques, though, it delivers exactly what it promises. The standout The Draw Inside and Draw Behind modes segment is the single most practical time-saver, showing how to add texture to a shirt or shadow to a leg without ever building a separate clipping mask. ## What you will learn - · Build pressure-sensitive calligraphic, pattern, and scatter brushes from scratch, including converting rectangles into a seamless repeating tile - · Use the grid, radial, and mirror Repeat tools to build patterns and symmetrical drawings like faces in minutes - · Create opacity masks to reveal halftone texture or gradient color through text and shapes - · Use the Blend tool (not just Blend Make) to morph a series of circles into smooth multicolor shapes, then edit spine, steps, and spacing - · Apply Draw Inside and Draw Behind modes to add texture within or behind a shape without manual clipping masks - · Combine several of these techniques into a single finished illustration with layered texture Best for: Working illustrators and graphic designers who already know Illustrator's core toolset and want a handful of specific new techniques to speed up texture and pattern work. Skip it if: Beginners still learning basic Illustrator navigation, layers, or the pen tool, since the class assumes fluency and never explains fundamentals. Engaging Teacher Helpful Examples Audio & Video Quality Clarity of Instruction [Get a Free Month on Skillshare](https://skillshare.eqcm.net/c/3155494/298081/4650?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.skillshare.com%2Fclasses%2Fadvanced-techniques-in-adobe-illustrator-adding-texture-in-graphic-design%2F783370213)