This tutorial will show how we can create wavy scanlines using Illustrator in simple steps and bring them into Photoshop to make a beautiful piece of design work. We will also touch on the use of Pen tool in Shape Layers mode to draw a vector girl.

Preview of Final Image

Create a document of size 600×900 pixels with black background. Download an image of Avril Lavigne here. You can also replace this image with other preferred characters. Bring the downloaded image into the document.

Select the Pen tool and choose Shape Layers mode on the Options Tab. Set the Foreground Color as #990066. Create a path along the border of the hair area. You can see a pink shape forming as you make the path longer.

But you will find it is harder to follow the hair border since some parts are covered by the pink shape. Reduce the Opacity of the pink shape to 50% so you can see it better. Use Convert Point Tool to adjust the points so they meet better to the hair border.

Repeat the same for the rest of the areas that you wish to have it as pink.

Hide the image temporary so that you can see better on how the pink shapes look like.

Unhide the image and carry on working on the white and purple shapes. These may take you some time to do but the end result is pretty cool isn’t it.

We will need Adobe Illustrator here. Open a new document with the default settings. Use the Pen tool and make 2 paths intersecting like what I have done below.

Go to Object > Blend > Blend Options. Set the Spacing to Specified Steps, value to 20 and Orientation to Align to Page.

Select the 2 paths and go to Object > Blend. You get several other lines forming in between them. Select these lines and hit CTRL+C to copy. You can download the lines I made here.

Now back to Adobe Photoshop and hit CTRL+V to paste as a Smart Object. Resize the lines to your desired size. Right-click on the lines layer and choose Color Overlay. Set the color to #9BF205.

Repeat the same steps for more lines behind the girl.

Create a new layer and rename it as Abstract. Using the Polygonal Lasso tool, make several abstract shape selections and fill it with the colors you used for the girl. Connect the girl to the document border with the abstract shapes, similarly to what is shown below.

Repeat the same steps for the head and shoulder areas.

Let us proceed with adding more wavy lines to the foreground. Do not use green again since it is taken for the background already. Use colors like pink, purple and white.

Adding some vertical straight lines will be cool as well.

Select the Custom Shape Tool and open up the presets to choose Hexagon Frame. Set the foreground color to white and make 3 hexagons that stack together like the screenshot shown.

Simply repeat the same steps with more hexagons around the document to complete the design. And some of you may have noticed, this design can be done totally in Illustrator as well. Hope you enjoy this tutorial. Wish you have a Happy New Year!