Illustrator Tutorial 11 : Christmas Desktop Wallpaper

Ho! Ho! It’s Christmas season again..This time I would like to share an interesting tutorial with you guys in conjunction to this Christmas season on how to create a simple Christmas Desktop Wallpaper.

The very first thing come out when I think about Christmas, would be Mr. Santa and the color Red, but this time I wouldn’t use any of Mr. Santa or Red color for my Christmas desktop wallpaper. How do you make your Christmas desktop wallpaper to be more simple yet attractive? Here’s how..

STEP 1 : First of all you need to create a new document in Illustrator by selecting 1064 x 768 for the size of your document and set the color mode to RGB. Select ‘Rectangular tool’ and create the background by covering all the background area and fill it with gradient colors for the background, on the Layers pallete (Press F7) name this first layer to be ‘Background’. As for this tutorial, I choosed a combination of Light Blue + Royal Blue for the background.

TIP : The size of your document is actually depends on your computer screen size since nowadays every computers and notebooks sale in the market are wide screen.

STEP 02 : Next.. in order to have your background to be more natural, create some small hills covered with a snow to be something like this by Using ‘Anchor Point’ (press P) on the Tool’s pallete.. Set the ‘Toggles Visibilty’ icon (something like an eye) on this layer to be off on the Layers pallete so that you can work on another drawing in a new layer without interfering any of those items.

STEP 03 : Next is for you to create a Christmas tree. This time I’ll share with you how to create a simple + quick christmas tree. First create a new layer (Layer 2) and name this layer ‘Tree’, then create 4 guidelines across each other to be like this Red guidelines. Then use the ‘Anchor Point’ (press P) to draw the outline on one side of the christmas tree.

STEP 04 : Later, just duplicate the outline of christmas tree and place it on the other side. First select the finish outline using ‘Selection Tool’ (press V) and copy (Apple+C / Ctrl+C) and place in front (Apple+F / Ctrl+F). Then, drag the new outline to the other side of the christmas tree and reflect it using ‘Reflect Tool’ (press O) while preesing shift button.

This Pathfinder effect will merge the two outlines to become one single shape.

STEP 05 : Select both outlines and go to Pathfinder (press Shift+F9) and select ‘Add to shape area’ icon while pressing ‘Alt’ button. Then fill the color you prefer for your christmas tree, recommended Green/Light Blue.

STEP 06 : Use ‘Rounded Rectangle Tool’ on the Tool’s pallete to create the tree’s wood. and fill it with brown color of your favourite.

Fill up more Christmas tree by simply duplicate them as many as you like.

STEP 07 : There you go, place the Christmas tree just nice on the hill side. To fill up more tree simply duplicate by selecting the tree using ‘Selection Tool’ (press V) and drag it to the area you want while pressing ‘Alt’ button.

STEP 08 : Later comes my favourite part.. Creating a Snow Man! First create one more new layer (Layer 3) on top of the (Layer Tree) by clicking the ‘Create a new layer’ icon on the Layers pallete and name this layer to ‘Snow Man’.

STEP 09 : Now, select ‘Ellipse tool’ (prees L ) on the tools pallete and start creating two round shape in two different size which is something like this. The small round shape on the upper part will be the ‘head’ of a snow man while the big round shape on the lower part will be the ‘body’. Later, continue creating the ‘eyes’ the ‘nose’ and the ‘mouth’ of the snow man. As for the mouth, use ‘Anchor Point ‘ (press P) and create one curve line.

STEP 10 : Create some more items for your snow man like a skarf and a tree branch then start filling up colors of your snow man. Choosing a right color combination is a key to get an attractive vector drawing. Here I choose gradient colors of Blue, Light Blue and White while Red for the skarf.

This how the snow man looks like..

and place it somewhere on the wallpaper.

STEP 11 : Finally, there’s one more thing you need to add on.. the snow! But before that, set all the Layers to be Lock by clicking the Lock icon on the Layer’s Pallete. Then only create a new layer (Layer 4) and name this layer ‘Snow’. This one will be a quick one.. using an ‘Ellipse tool’ (prees L ) on the Tool’s pallete, create a small round shape then fill it with White color. Duplicate this round shape by using ‘Selection Tool’ and drag it to fill the area while pressing ‘Alt’ button.

Tip : To get more attractive results, duplicate the snow into various different kind of sizes.

There you go.. your Christmas desktop wallpaper is ready..