Vector drawings, particularly those of animals, have a tendency to look flat and stale. Adding fur to your animals can help to turn your drawing into a rich, textural piece without having to rely on Photoshop. This tutorial is geared towards intermediate to advanced Adobe CS3 Illustrator users.

Step 1 - Setting up Colors

First, we can want to set up a color palette that goes with our particular animal. If your animal is a rabbit, you might want creams and whites, a panther might require blacks and blues. Kuler is a great resource when setting up colors. You are going to want four to six different shades and tints of a similar color.

In this tutorial, I am going to be working on a teddy bear and will use six browns in the default Illustrator palette. From two of the mid-range tones create a base gradient. Click the New Swatch icon at the bottom of the swatch library to save this gradient