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Create Hand Drawn Social Media Icons

posted by John Owen on July 6th, 2009, in Icons, Photoshop | 7 Comments

Hand Drawn Icons are in fashion at the moment, there’s plenty of them on the web and they are very easy to create. This tutorial will show you how to create them, it is a very simple method and will help your drawing skills along the way .

Note: Don’t be put off by my bad drawing.

Here is a simplified version of the tutorial:

Step 1 – Drawing The Icons

I only drew eight social media icons, due to the fact that this is a tutorial you can do it yourself. I gave myself a reference as well.

Reference:

My Poorly Drawn Icons:

Now i’m sure you can do better, to get these icons on the computer I used a scanner. Make sure it’s a high quality scanner so you can get every detail. Make sure to use a sharp pencil and keep them all roughly the same size.

Step 2 – Improving The Icons

Once your icons are on your computer open them up in photoshop, add acurves adjustment layer and darken up the icons.

I’m going to color the icons now, i’m mainly using the selection tool and the hue/saturation adjustment layer with colorize checked. When you create a selection with a layer selected and add a new adjustment layer, the adjustment layer only affects the selection previously made.

So Far:

Step 3 – Finishing Touches

Usually when you downsize the icon, they will look better. Add any other effects you want such as shadows, glows etc.. I applied a slight poster edge.

Viola! Any questions? Just comment!