Well, Im new around here, but I def love this site. Keep it up steel.

For this post I need help on doing art work for a vinyl sign. My boss uses Flexi sign which is nothing more than a vector art program. But I use Illustrator for any of the artjobs he has me do. ;-) My assignment was to draw a hillbilly for a customers sign. So I did what any good design should do first and I sketched out my ideas on paper, got a good one, and then scanned it in for working in Illustrator.

I was looking at this tutorial...
http://studio.adobe.com/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=658&xml=ill10ppcartoons


I just need some tips on doing vector art in Illustrator. I understand and can use the pen tool relatively well, same with the pencil tool (although it trips me up sometimes)...and thats sorta where Im stuck.

In the above tutorial the artist said he uses the pencil tool for working quickly, but I dont understand how he gets lines to 'overlap' for say the pits of arms and elbows, or where a line interconnects. In other words, everything I do ends up being a dumb outline.

So in general my question is just: What are some essential tips or hints to drawing well in Illustrator?

There are several techniques, one I have seen/done often is an outline made and filled with a solid colour (usually a dark one like brown or black), then shapes are placed on the filled outline in layers to build up features.

It's kind of hard to explain.

If you have some clipart, open it in illustrator and look at how it's constructed. Illustrator comes with a couple of sample images including the cat in your tutorial link as far as I remember.

Hope that helps a little :)