In order to draw a banana I have a few choices to make. I can either go by memory and draw a banana how I know it should look; or, I can roughly follow the look of a banana from a photo/stock photo, or I could identically trace a banana from a photograph. My choice today will be to go to http://sxc.hu and find a stock photo, I will then draw a banana from scratch using the photo as a reference. I am going to use a delicious looking photo taken by “kotz”:

Now I could follow the design of kotz’s banana photo, and trace over each line of the artwork using layers to go for an identical vector look. However, in this case I’m going to do something different. I will be using the photo as a reference and sketch my own banana alongside of it.

1. I start by drawing a line that represents the basic shape of the banana. I call this the heart of my image, this is my reference for the rest of the banana. Note: I’m drawing with Illustrator’s paintbrush tool, but I want to emphasis that for your first few times practicing, I recommend grabbing a #2 pencil and some sheets of blank paper, and following along by hand. With each new step I make I will be using the color red. When I start the next step, my last bit of drawing will be black; this is for you to see the progress of the artwork.

2. Next I scribble around the first line using a method of drawing that I call “gesturing”. Right now we want to work on the basic form of the banana, and not worry about perfection.

3. The next few steps will be to gesture more until I have created a form of the banana that I like.

4, 5, 6 Wonderful! It looks like a banana wiremesh. Now this may take you some practice, but the more you try, the more easily it will become. In picture #6 I have reduced the stroke from .5 pts to .25 pts.

7. Now, I carefully follow around the parameter of the banana with my pen tool, referencing the original photo for details, especially at the stem and base of the banana.

A side note: Now once again, I want to say that I’m not going for an identical look, merely referencing this photo. Why all this extra scribbling? It helps in the design process to learn about the shapes and forms of objects. If I were to see a banana out in the woods (like when I used to live in Puerto Rico) I could draw it without having to actually take a photo and trace over each part of it. For the purpose of this tutorial though, I show the gesturing to help people realize how they could get that perfect shape of an object by simply scribbling, it’s a powerful tool!

Want a quick example? What if I wanted to draw that banana in a different position and I didn’t have a photo that was in that exact position? I can still use the original photo as a reference for the details of the banana, but using gesturing I can draw an entirely different position. For example:

8. Now that we have our basic banana shape, we cYan start putting some colors in.

9. For this drawing, I like the idea of a thick black stroke. For my fill color I will be using a good looking yellow.

10. To fill in the colors, or “shade” it, I “contour” shapes around the inside of the banana with a small black stroke using the pencil tool, and will later fill them in. I’m using the photo now as a reference for selecting the colors.

11. Now to make the colors lighter or darker, I will usually use a black or white fill and change the opacity to 1-25%. Or I can simply choose a different color from the color palette.

12. For this tutorial I won’t be going into all detail with all the finishing touches, that will have to come in a later tutorial. I hope you have enjoyed learning how to draw a banana!