Illustrator Tutorial : Cutaway Technical Illustration

This is a free illustration tutorial designed to provide helpful information related to computer graphics. Additionally, there are detailed step-by-step Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials, tips and tricks for technical illustration students, professional technical illustrators and digital artists.
All of the initial line artwork was done in vector based Adobe Illustrator CS. Most of the final color work (Page 2 - Photoshop Tutorial) was done in Adobe Photoshop. The techniques used in this demonstration tutorial are applicable to any 3 dimensional perspective drawing, regardless of scale or complexity.
This illustrator tutorial project presented many unique challenges. The actual ship (Radiance of the Seas) was still in Germany being completed for Royal Caribbean when I started the project. There was no photography or CAD reference to work from, only the paper blueprint you see below. In order to have the brochures completed by the time the ship went into service, the final illustration had to be finished in under two months.

The first step was to map out the physical space that the ship would occupy (below) by creating a perspective grid. By establishing a horizon line and vanishing points, an angle was developed that showed the maximum amount of features on the ship.
Technical Note: This type of angle is generally referred to as a 3/4 perspective view. For more information on perspective drawing techniques used in mechanical drafting and architectural drawing, go to: 2 Point Perspective Drawing Tutorial.

Download free tutorial "Illustrator Tutorial : Cutaway Technical Illustration" here!