Don't trot out some bogus special case appeal like "I'm just not the type able to read documentation I'm a 'visual' person," etc., etc., ad nauseam. There is no shortcut to this, and it IS the shortest path toward developing actual balanced proficiency.
Read it start-to-finish, and work through every operation described as you go.
The way to learn any software is to start with its official documentation. If I had a buck for every online Illustrator "tutorial" authored by relative beginners giving other beginners downright bad advice (blind leading the blind), I'd be richer than Adobe hopes to become by abusing its customers with a rent-only licensing scheme. The fact that the subject of a "tutorial" looks like something you want to do is absolutely no guarantee that its author is any more "expert" than you, nor that-even if he is-has enough technical writing skill or dilligence to accurately describe the process, nor that the process being described is even best practice in the first place. Such "tutorials" are created by other users of all levels of actual experience. Diving into online "tutorials" posted all over the web by other Illustrator users IS NOT the way to get started. You're just making it harder on yourself.
I've watched a dozen tutorials on YouTube, but none of them answer my question. And the differences are for good and legitimate reasons. It's an entirely different process for entirely different purposes. When starting out with vector-based drawing program (any of them, not just Illustrator), you are far better off FORGETTING Photoshop. I've used it in lieu of italics because of bugs introduced yet again in the rich text editor of this forum.) (I wish something at least conceptually like it were provided as an omnipresent FAQ or even required reading to which to direct newcomers.)
It's an entirely different world.īecause this subject is so often repeated here, the following is intended as "open" advice to all (at least those with ears to hear) not as an affront to originator of this thread or anyone else. This is the most common of beginner fallacies: bringing completely erroneous assumptions that a program like Illustrator works like Photoshop.