20 Beautiful Nature Inspired Tutorials from Vectortuts+

There’s nothing like the seasons and nature to inspire great works of art. Today we have have bundled together a collection of beautiful and inspiring tutorials from the Vectortuts+ archives. Covering a variety of subjects from landscapes to water drops there’s plenty of projects to help you imagine and create your own fantastic nature inspired illustrations.

• Create a Garden Scene Using Brushes in Illustrator — Vector Premium Tutorial

  In today’s tutorial, I’m going to be showing you how to create this garden scene using the Appearance panel, Art and Scatter brushes. Along the way, you will see how Color Guides and using the Rectangular Grid Tool can help you put together a composition.

• Create a Magical Vector Landscape Using Illustrator — Vector Premium Tutorial

  Today you have a great chance to learn the secrets of creating a real illustration. This artwork belongs to the series of illustrations called "Hanami" which will be participating in the illustration competition for a children’s book. "Hanami" is Japanese for "festival of enjoying cherry blossoms." The "Hanami" series has been created by Catherine Dedova (great vector artist). In this tutorial, she will share the secrets of her skills with us. This tutorial will be useful for all vector fans, from beginners to professionals.

• Create a Vector Bamboo Forest with Blends, Brushes and Profiles

  In today’s tutorial you’ll learn how to create a bamboo vector illustration with the help of custom art and pattern brushes, blends and profiles on strokes in Adobe Illustrator CS5. Vector bamboo is an excellent element to use in your work to give a classic Japanese fine art print feel, for use as bamboo forest art background in a larger illustration, and to make your vector pictures stand out with stylish bamboo art. So let’s jump straight into it!

• Create A Lotus Flower With Adobe Illustrator CS5

  In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to make a Lotus Flower in Adobe Illustrator. We’ll use some basic tools (Ellipse, Direct Selection, Pencil, and more) to draw lotus petals and leaves. Next we’ll color these shapes with the Gradient Mesh Tool. Finally, arrange them to become a complete work. Let’s get started.

• Creating an Environmentally Friendly Green Type Treatment

  With oil prices the way they are today, everybody is thinking Green. I have done many projects recently that require a Green style applied to the design. In the following Illustrator tutorial, I’ll teach you how to create a Green type treatment. It works great for logos and other design elements.

• How to Create a Textured Vector Landscape

  In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a stylized textured vector landscape. The techniques are simple and easily translated into other illustrations. Check out Chris Spooners post 40 Stunning Vector Landscape Illustrations for more vector landscape inspiration.

• Quick Tip: Create a Pretty Bouquet of Flowers with Adobe Illustrator

  In this tutorial you will learn how to create a bouquet of pretty flowers, using only Art Brushes and and the Gradient Mesh Tool. You will find that the techniques learnt in this Quick Tip will help you craft a variety of flowers and decorative elements. Let’s get started!

• Create a Painterly Landscape with the Blob Brush Tool

  Illustrator’s Blob Brush is an intuitive and versatile tool. When used with a graphics tablet, you can create loose, painterly images that venture far from the sharp, clean lines usually associated with vector graphics. These files retain all the benefits of vector files, however, allowing you to experiment and be flexible with scale, color and composition. Let’s get started!

• Quick Tip: How to Draw Atmospheric Perspective

  In this Quick Tip you will learn how to apply the principles of Atmospheric Perspective within Illustrator. Using Transparency Masks, simple Linear Gradients and the Hue Saturation Balance color sliders you will blend flat objects to give a scene a sense of depth. Let’s get started!

• How to Draw a Fall Leaf Using Adobe Illustrator

  During this tutorial we will learn to create a vector autumn leaf and the universal texture of a leaf. You will learn to use the following techniques in practice: Live Trace, Art Brush, Mesh and many others. The tutorial contains lots of practical advice and recommendations. The seamless leaf texture can be used in your future works as an element of a design. Learn more at the jump!

• How to Make a Colorful, Environmental Slice

  This tutorial is about creating an earth slice that looks like a piece of cake. When doing such "environmental" illustrations it’s kind of hard to stop adding details. The first twenty four steps are about creating the slice and another thirteen cover the rest. The process of adding the details are covered at a quicker pace, as this is where you should add your own illustrative style. Have fun!

• How to Illustrate a Luminous Vector Sunset

  In this tutorial you will learn how to create Vector Sunset, using the RGB color model. Using Art and Scatter Brushes, Gaussian Blur, Gradient Mesh and the Transparency palette, you will create a vector image with depth and luminance.

• Create an Illustration of a Pearl-Filled Clam on an Ocean Bed

  Plunge with me on a vector ocean dive. In this tutorial, we’ll create a shell with pearls in a unique ocean scene. We’ll be using various effects, such as: mesh, blend, warp, clipping mask, opacity mask, depth of sharpness, editing of swatches, and pathfinder box. Have fun diving in and then surfacing!

• How to Create a Rainy Window Vector Background

  Using the Symbolism Tools, plus a bit of Gradient Mesh, learn to make a realistic window covered with raindrops. This is an advanced tutorial that assumes a fair amount of Illustrator experience, but everyone should be able to follow along. It can be done with earlier versions of Illustrator, but takes full advantage of newer features in CS4. Let’s get started!

• Make an Aurora Borealis Design in Illustrator

  To recreate the light patterns of the Aurora Borealis you’d probably turn to Photoshop’s filters and effects. Use Illustrator however, and you’ll not only achieve a stunning end result, but you’ll also benefit from the flexibility of working with vectors. This is an intermediate level tutorial rewarding you with an attractive desktop wallpaper for your efforts!

• Create an Attractive Arctic Landscape Environment in Illustrator

  Establish a foundation on which to build more advanced Adobe Illustrator skills by completing this tutorial. We’ll cover how to use shapes and gradients to achieve a simple landscape environment.

• Create a Watercolor Vector Flower Illustration

  Illustrator is great for creating sharp flawless lines and elements, but sometimes you want to create an illustration with some texture and depth. Watercolor paintings have great textures and depth, but when coupled with Illustrator it seems counterproductive to what the program was built for. You might think "Why not just do this in Photoshop?" Then you will miss out on all the wonderful things vectors have to offer, like scalability.

• Create a Beautiful Lily Pad Using Adobe Illustrator

  In this tutorial we will learn how to create a beautiful lily pad in Adobe Illustrator. We will use basic drawing tools: like the Rectangle Tool, Ellipse Tool, and Pen Tool for drawing. For coloring we will use the Gradient Mesh and Blend extensively. So let’s begin!

• Smoothly Shift Winter Colors, While Creating an Icy, Vector Landscape

  Handle color changes and variations with ease by following this intermediate level tutorial. This is a special tutorial sponsored by Astute Graphics that incorporates the use of their high-quality Phantasm CS range Illustrator Plug-ins. We’ll work with Phantasm’s color shifting tools: Hue/Saturation and and Shift to Color, while we learn to contrast shapes when composing natural, vector scenes!

• Craft a Dramatic Vector Landscape Environment

  This tutorial will show the intermediate Adobe Illustrator artist how to make a dramatic landscape environment. You should have a basic understanding of Adobe Illustrator tools before you begin this tutorial, as the tutorial moves at a rapid pace.