So you’ve drawn something on paper, congrats! But now what? I like to give away my drawings, but sometimes I want to get them onto the computer in a quick way to put on a greeting card or use on a print on demand site to sell or create products. So, what’s the quickest way to do this? There are multiple ways, varying from more exact to quick and dirty.

For this blog, we’re going to use the app Adobe Capture to grab a quick capture of our black and white drawing to bring onto your computer. Please note that this blog was written in 2020, so the app features and techniques may have changed a bit since then. This method won’t give you a perfect image, but is a quick way to get your hand-drawn pieces into digital form. Getting a better capture in Adobe Capture can help, but I like to just go with it and am okay with a vector image that’s a little more hand-drawn looking and less perfect.

You’ll want a pure black and white drawing, ideally with no shading, to use the Adobe Capture method. This method is for bringing your Adobe Capture image onto the computer to finish up using Adobe Illustrator, so you’ll need access to that program to complete the full tutorial (you can get a 30 day trial on the Adobe website).

So grab your drawing and let’s get started.

1. Photograph Your Drawing Using the App Adobe Capture

For this method, you’ll need to download the free app “Adobe Capture” from your phone’s app store. Once you have it installed, put your drawing in a very bright place, ideally with natural even light. Lay your drawing flat, open the Adobe Capture app, and hold your phone parallel to your drawing. Make sure you keep your phone level and parallel to whatever surface your drawing is on, otherwise your drawing will be distorted.

Adobe Capture makes an effort to show you what your drawing will look like. This app works best with just black and white drawings and ones with lots of contrast (no shades of gray or shading). You can adjust the slider on the screen to get the best looking capture of your image. Hit the button to capture your image once you’re ready.

After capturing, you can edit your capture in the app for things such as cropping, erasing areas, painting in areas that might have disappeared, or smoothing it out. You can try out any of these edits using different settings and save multiple versions of your artwork, just in case once you bring it onto your computer you find one easier to work with than another.

Save your image(s) using the button in the upper right to your Creative Cloud library so you can open it on your computer in Adobe Illustrator.

2. Open Your Captured Drawing in Adobe Illustrator

Now it’s time to take that capture and make it vector points. These instructions are for using Adobe Illustrator, since the Capture app is compatible with that. This tutorial assumes some knowledge of the program already. Open Adobe Illustrator and open up your Library panel, which shows files you have saved to your Cloud account. You should see your saved capture from Step 1 in your Cloud library. You can now drag it out onto a new or existing canvas to edit it.

Once your capture is in Adobe Illustrator, you can resize it (hold shift down to resize it proportionally to avoid distortion). Since it’s vector already, you can make it as large as you want without losing any detail or quality. As you scale it up large, though, you may notice some of the bumpiness of your hand-drawn lines are more visible or exaggerated, so I usually keep my drawing about the same size as the original.

Keep in mind that your image will have come in as vector filled shapes, so all lines aren’t a stroke but a thin filled shape.

3. Edit your Image

To edit your image, you’ll need to ungroup it by selecting it and doing the shortcut Shift+Ctrl+G to ungroup (or find this in the Object menu along the top). You can delete any extra content, like dots in the white space or dark areas around the edges. I also usually have some white spaces in objects that I’ve filled in with marker on my drawing since my marker isn’t opaque everywhere. You can select any of those you don’t want with the Group Select Tool and deleting them (this is beneath the white arrow Direct Select Tool in the toolbar—hold down the white arrow in the toolbar and you’ll see the option to select the Group Select arrow beneath it).

Take a look at your image. Is it looking how you’d like? If not, we can fix it. You can spend a lot of time fixing things, or embrace some of the fun wonky-ness that comes from a hand-drawn original. I go for the latter—it is hand-drawn so I keep some of that charm and save time by not over-editing it.

If there are areas that you’d like to add content too, such as filling in an area that disappeared when you captured it, you can use the Blob Brush tool in Illustrator to paint in shapes. You may need to add these to your original shapes by selecting both and using the Pathfinder, Unite option to join the two shapes into one. You can also erase areas if some objects came out connected using the Capture app using the Erase tool. I usually do all the painting and erasing all in black since it’s easy to see.

Lastly, are there wiggly lines that you wish were straighter? You can fix that with the Path Smooth pencil tool. This is hidden behind the Shaper and Pencil tools in the toolbar. You’ll want to select the object with the edge you’d like to smooth, then run the Smooth tool over it until it appears how you like. The tool will smooth the line and adjust points to make the edge less jagged. You can also remove extra points by clicking on the ones you no longer want using the Pen Remove Anchor Points tool (hidden behind the Pen tool).

4. Add Color

Once you’ve done any fine-tuning in the step above, you can add color to the shapes and objects (unless you’ve chosen to keep your illustration just in black and white). For any objects that stand alone by themselves, such as an individual letter, you can just select it and change the fill color from black to whatever color you choose. If I’m changing color of multiple objects to the same color, such as a word made up of lots of letters, I’ll select them all and group them (Ctrl-G shortcut) so that I just have to change the fill once, and I can easily change the color of the whole word or object to another one if I change my mind.

If you’d like to add color fills inside objects you just have an outline for, there are two methods for doing this—for both, it’s recommended to put the filled shapes on a layer behind the outlines (using the Layers palette).

Method one is using the Group Select Tool, select just the outline of an area you’d like filled. Ctrl-C (or Edit, Copy) to copy it and then hit Ctrl-B (or Edit, Paste to Back) to paste it on the layer beneath and exactly aligned behind the original. Now you should have a shape that fits within the outlined portion on a layer behind. You can add color to this shape without affecting the outline on the layer above. Brilliant! This works best for simple flat shapes without tons of small details within.

Method two is using the pen tool and draw shapes on a layer behind your outlines to add fills—this method is best when you have a lot of tiny spaces and shapes or details. It’d be too hard to copy and paste all of those tiny shapes (like in the photo below of the passport), so this method is quicker. You can be inexact about it without having to match the lines perfectly since the outlines on the layer above hide the edges of your filled shape behind, so I usually just use the pen tool and click to create an straight-lined angled shape. As long as the object looks filled, you’re all good. Voila, color!

As you start adding fills, there may be some shapes, like the letter R for instance, that has a middle area that needs to be cut out of the shape you create. For this, you’ll just create the main larger shape first, then using the same method with the Group Select tool, select the interior area that will be cut out (that you’d like the same as the background) and paste it in the same way. Then select both the main full letter and open the Pathfinder window. Use the Minus Front option—you’ll know it was right when the middle of the R disappears and now the letter looks proper.

Repeat until the entire illustration is colored to your liking. And magic! Now you can pop your image into any greeting card or print on demand template to create some stuff with your drawing on it! How fun, and easy!

Additional Resources

If you've enjoyed this short tutorial, consider signing up for a longer course in learning hand-lettering. You can follow me on Eventbrite to get notifications when I announce a new online or in-person workshop and grab tickets before they sell out.