PNG-24, Gradients and Gradient Mesh in Illustrator.

One thing I've never really tried is gradients in Illustrator, I understand how they work in Photoshop to a certain extent. I think that understanding gradients within this software could unlock so much potential towards creating some really high class pieces of work. It can give objects much more life and by understanding this you can control that crucial element. I thought I could also kill a few birds with one stone within wanting to try out gradients as well.

I have imported my drawings into illustrator plenty of times before. Most of the times before they were quick sketches. I went round these outlines with the pen tool. The way I did it was very time consuming, so I have found something new that could hopefully save time on future projects. I have used the live trace tool in the past, but I think it looks a bit pants for what I usually create.



Here is what I drew for trying this shizz out...



...and this is the pen I used to create it, it's also another one of the birds that I killed with the one stone. It's a ZIG artist sketching pen (alcohol-based permanent ink), and it was a pleasure using it. It has a pen has a plastic fine tip which a good size. The line it gives isn' t as smooth as the Faber-Castell pen that I've been using. The pen gives the illustration a rougher look I guess, I created this one quick time so maybe it was just the way I was drawing. I like it thought, very much so.



Now I needed to keep the black outline and get rid of the white around it. I did this by acquiring the magic wand tool and selecting a white section. I proceeded to Select > Similar which highlighted all the white parts within the canvas like so...





Once selected I deleted it all.



When I did this I noticed there were still some slightly grey parts left on the outline, it needed to be an opaque black line. I sorted this out by just going into the blending options and changed the colour overlay to black.



It was now time to export the line work to illustrator. Keeping the background of the canvas transparent I went to File > Save for Web. I then changed the preset to PNG-24 and made sure the transparency box was ticked. This works just like the multiply layer style that I use in photoshop to create my illustrations and it means it's not being turned into a vector either. So if I ever really create anything in illustrator I must make sure I scan the image in at a high resolution.



I opened illustrator and placed the line work within it. I then quickly coloured in the face and made a circle behind it.



when the circle was selected I chose the gradient swatch and it changed to this manner.



Then to change the colour of the gradient I made my own swatches for the colour I wanted inside the gradient and I dragged this into the bar that determined the output of the gradient.



Once I played around with different outputs I couldn't get anything to look right so I decided the circle needed to be changed.



I ended up making the circle a tad bigger, this meant I could stretch out the gradient to make the fade more gradual and much smoother. The gradient size was now spot on a fits nicely behind my sketch. I did think it looked a tad plain at this point so I had a look into what I change about it.



Looking at some of the tools I had at my finger tips I came across the knife tool. I've experimented with it before, but never applied it properly to something. I duplicated the circle and used the tool to cut out segments from the circle on top, which I changed to this mustard yellow colour. I then chopped up the circle on the bottom into more segments (all the segments that were knifed are displayed in screen grab) and then changed each panel to a different shade of green.



Another circle was placed in front of the others and I gave it the gradient effect and changed around the black and the white so the fade was disappearing into the canvas.



I then started to play the with style of the gradient circle to see if I could get the black to disappear and the white fade to stay present.



Now I had worked out how to use gradients I wanted to look into using mesh gradients. Just like with all the other processes and techniques I've learnt in this entry I used online tutorials to guide me through them.

I first started by making a shape for where I wanted my mesh gradient to sit within.



Going to Oject > Create Mesh Gradient, it brought up this dialog. I set it to 2 rows and 2 columns and it created a mesh.



I then edited this mesh with the Direct Selection tool to follow the contours of the guys nose.



With the Direct Selection tool which points I wanted to be coloured in and proceeded to the swatches to select the required colour.





I used the mesh to create the shading on top of the eyebrows as well



I am really pleased with the way this has turned out. I think I enjoy working in illustrator more than working in photoshop so my learning how to create transparent PNG images means I can now use this software much more often. My line work can now stay the same as what it looks like when I first create it on paper, so now I have another piece of software to help me refine and experiment with what I'm drawing.

Finally got my head around making gradients and mesh gradients. I'm going to keep experimenting with both techniques, especially the mesh. If I wanted to progress more with this way of creating gradients I would learn how