Low Poly in Illustrator

Did you know that you can quickly and easily create low poly art in Illustrator? Low poly art is beautiful in a unique way, and we're going to show you how to create it using the Pen Tool and the Live Paint Bucket. You can use the design you create for all sorts of things. Make greeting cards and sublimation designs with them, or simply decorate your house with them.

We picked an image of some leaves and a butterfly for this tutorial, but you can use any image of the subject you want to create low poly art with.

Step 1 - Import Your Image

In a new Illustrator document, go to File > Place. Then locate your image, select it, and click Place. Then click on the artboard to place the image at its actual size, or click + drag to place the image at the size you want.

Step 2 - Crop Image if Needed

If your image is full of other things, you can crop your image down to just your subject. With your image still selected, click the Crop Imagebutton in the Control panel at the top.

Click + drag the handles to crop your image, and then click the Apply button at the top.

Step 3 - Transform and Move Image to the Center

You can resize and rotate your image with the Selection Tool if needed. Remember to hold down Shift when resizing. Then click + drag the image and move it to the center.

Step 4 - Lock the Image Layer and Create a New Layer

Open the Layers panel (Window > Layers). Lock the image layer (Layer 1) by clicking to the right of the eye icon. A padlock icon will appear when the layer has been locked. Then click the Create New Layer icon at the bottom of the panel.

Step 5 - Create Outlines and Triangles With the Pen Tool

Change Layer Color If Needed

If the layer color is too close to the color of your subject, you may want to change it so you can see the paths easier as you create them. You’ll see what we mean in the next step.

Double-click on the new layer and pick a different color. We changed ours from red to turquoise.

Start Creating the Outline

Select the Pen Tool (P), choose a contrasting color for the Stroke, and set the Fill to none. Click along the edge of one area of your subject. You can divide your subject into areas by color or by the different parts. For example, we will separate the top and bottom parts of the butterfly wing.

Create Triangles

As you’re coming back around to the start of the outline, don’t click on the starting anchor point. We don’t want to close the shape just yet.

One tip to follow when creating triangles is to hold down the Shift key if you need to click on an anchor point or line. If you accidentally forget to hold down Shift, simply Undo (Ctrl/Cmd + Z) and try again.

Once you’ve added the last anchor point next to the starting anchor point, hold down Shift, and click on the second anchor point you added. Then continue filling the area with triangles. See our example below.

Close the Shape

Once you’ve filled the entire area with triangles, make your way back to the starting anchor point to finally close the shape. Clicking on the starting anchor point should create the last triangle for that area.

Start Outlining Another Area

When you start outlining another area, you want to follow the existing outlines, so the edges match up as perfectly as possible. Because the other areas are separate paths/shapes, you don’t have to hold down Shift when clicking on their anchor points. See our example below for a better understanding.

Repeat this step (Step 5) for the rest of your areas. We will skip the butterfly body for now.

Step 6 - Open Color Swatches to Use

Before we start filling the triangles, open the Swatches panel (Window Swatches). Next, click on the Swatch Libraries menu icon at the bottom of the Swatches panel and select a swatch library.

The selected swatch library will open in a separate panel. From there, you can click the left and right arrows to cycle through the different swatch libraries for other colors.

Step 7 - Fill Triangles With Color Using the Live Paint Bucket

Select the Area(s) and the Live Paint Bucket

With the Selection Tool (V), select one or more areas. Because we will fill all our triangles in one go, we'll select all the areas. Now select the Live Paint Bucket (K) from the left toolbar.

Create a Live Paint Group

Once the Live Paint Bucket is active, click on your selection to make a Live Paint group.

Fill Triangles With Color

Make sure the Fill icon in the left toolbar is in front of the Stroke icon. Then with the Live Paint Bucket active, pick a color swatch and click on a triangle to fill it. If two triangles have sides touching, try to avoid filling them with the same shade. Repeat this process for the rest of the triangles.

You can fill the triangles with whatever colors you want, but if your image has lighter and/or darker areas, you may want to fill the triangles in those areas accordingly.

Repeat Step 7 if you are filling the areas one by one and select the next area.

Step 8 - Expand Live Paint Group

With all the triangles filled, select all the Live Paint groups, and go to Object > Live Paint > Expand.

Step 9 - Ungroup and Delete Line

With the design still selected, right-click, and choose Ungroup (Shift + Ctrl/Cmd + G).

Select only the lines and press Delete.

Skip to Step 12 if you aren’t doing a butterfly design or don’t need to mirror your design.

Step 10 - Mirror a Copy and Move It to the Right

Select the design, right-click and go to Transform > Reflect. In the Reflect dialog, select Vertical and click Copy.

Click + drag the duplicate over while holding Shift.

Step 11 - Repeat Steps for Butterfly Body

We repeated Step 5 through Step 9 for the body of the butterfly. Then we hid the actual image to see our design.

Step 12 - Fix Gaps Between Triangles

If you see any gaps between triangles, you can select all the anchor points at that corner with the Direct Selection Tool (A) and move them to fill the gap.

Note: if you move the anchor points one by one, make sure Snap to Point (Alt/Option + Ctrl/Cmd + “) is enabled in the View menu.

Our low poly art is complete! Check out the other variations we created.

Low poly is such an awesome art style! We took you through many steps, but overall, it’s pretty easy to create low poly art in Illustrator. Remember, you can do this with any image.