The Sloth has been labelled as the ‘it’ animal of 2019 by Etsy Trend report. You may have seen a rise of Sloth artwork used for stationery, books, patterns, homeware and gifts for children as well as adults, and we believe it will still hang on in 2020.

We are excited to feature our teams 10 Best Sloth Illustrations of 2019 followed by our tutorial on how to create your very own Sloth creature illustration. 

Each of these illustrators has totally different styles and workflows. One thing they all have in common? They create beautiful Sloth illustrations which have been used in all sorts of ways from Surface and Apparel Design to Branding and Packaging or just because it's fun to make! 

We hope you found this as inspiring as we do. Now, are you ready to start your own Sloth illustration? We highly recommend you to watch our tutorial on how to draw a Sloth in Adobe Illustrator.

Here are our key tips to consider for Vector Illustrations:

1. Research and collect references. This can be photos, other artists work, colours, textures etc. We use Milanote to organise and create mood boards for all projects.

2. Sketches or Thumbnails. Try to do various sketches in a quick thumbnail format. Having a good sketch, in the beginning, is key to any illustration. The sketch will act as a guideline for your final artwork which may vary slightly. We recommend you do a minimum of 3 sketches and try to capture the expression on a character illustration. You can read more about the principles of character illustration here.

3. Once you are happy, place your sketch into Adobe Illustrator and set the layer to template mode so you can draw over it on a separate layer. If you sketch on paper then you can either scan it or take a photo with your smartphone and then send it to your computer.

4. When it’s time to vectorise your sketch, get into the habit of using the Pen tool. If your sketch has a lot of round shapes then its best to use the Curvature tool which by default draws in Curves.

5. Take your time and enjoy the process.

We would love to see you use these techniques in your own Sloth illustration!

If you do decide to take up the challenge don't forget to post your work on social media using the hashtag #yesimadesigner. That way we can find it, leave you a comment and share!