How to Create a Neon Tubing Type Effect

By Steve Bain

The ability to create objects to appear as if they have been fashioned into Neon tube lighting is a popular technique sought after by many illustrators. In this tutorial, you’ll learn to select the most ideal font for achieving the best results and embellish your type with color lighting to add realism. Although this tutorial refers to interface command locations and interface illustrations specific to CorelDRAW X3, the basic technique can be used with any version of CorelDRAW as far back as version 5.

Click to enlarge

Get the Midas Touch: Create a Gold Text Effect

By Steve Bain

Creating the effect of rich, golden type is very similar to the effect used to create metallic-looking illustration effects. What’s often the challenge for new illustrators is the color scheme needed, and the steps for achieving it. In this tutorial, you’ll learn in nine steps the exact color scheme and fountain fill settings for creating a simple gold effect (see below), and the quickest way to create the effect in CorelDRAW. The step sequence used in this technique is valid using any recent version of CorelDRAW.

The finished result

Create the Look of Shiny Metal

By Steve Bain

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to browse through the product packaging in an automotive store, you’ve seen first hand the primary uses of metallic-style lettering. Before graduated PostScript fills became the norm in digital illustration, metallic illustration effects like the one shown below could only be achieved through tedious, manual airbrushing.

The final effect

Mastering CorelDRAW’s Mesh Fills

By Steve Bain

Mesh fills offer you the power to solve many types of realistic illustrative challenges with a minimum of objects. But, few new users take the plunge and dive into the complex depths of this slightly intimidating CorelDRAW feature. Next, we’ll take some of the mystery out of working with mesh fills and explore a few simple, practical applications.

The Practical Side of Creating Perspective with CorelDRAW

By Steve Bain

In the real world, all the shapes you see with your eyes have at least some degree of perspective-the effect of distant shapes appearing smaller. So it goes without saying that to make your shapes appear realistic in an illustrated scene, you’ll need to add a sense of depth by scaling things which are close larger than things which are farther away.

Perspective also comes into play with the surfaces on individual objects. For this, you can add a sense of depth using CorelDRAW’s perspective effect. This feature has changed little over the years and remains the unchanged in recent versions of CorelDRAW. Let’s take a close look at perspective drawing and learn a few tips and tricks CorelDRAW provides.

CorelDRAW’s Snap and Guide Features Speed Your Design Work

By Steve Bain

Improved snapping functionality and Dynamic Guides first introduced in CorelDRAW version 12 make drawing accurate diagrams and objects a breeze. To see for yourself, follow along in this quick design project to see how simple a challenging logo design can be to create.

Here, a fictitious 3D-style, two-character logo represents the design. It involves an uppercase M and W drawn manually, shaped to fit three sides of a cube, and colored to suggest lighting. You’ll see how the new object Snap modes and Dynamic Guides make the process a walk in the park.

Selectively Colorize Digital Photos

By Steve Bain

Using Corel PHOTO-PAINT®, you can create the popular illusion of black-and-white pictures that feature specific areas of color. This particular technique entails just a few simple steps and enables you to create the effect without permanently altering the original color image. The trick, of course, is to start with a full-color image.