(acoustic guitar)
- [Helen] Hello and welcome to this Design Cuts
video tutorial, today we're looking at creating
geometric art and gradient lines in Illustrator.
For the first example, I'm going to choose file
and new and create a document 1920 by 1080 pixels in size.
I'll click create, this is a document that is wider
than it is tall.
I'm selecting the pencil tool here and making sure
that I don't have any fills selected.
That's critical, or the effect is not going to look correct.
So I'm going to start by drawing some wiggly lines
from one side of the art board to the other.
Now I want some plainish sort of lines
with just gentle bumps in them.
And I want one that has a sort of loop in it.
You don't want all of your lines
to sort of look the same.
So I'm gonna do one that's got some ups and downs.
And I'll finish off with one that is a sort of loop.
Four lines should be sufficient.
We're going to create a blend of these lines,
so I'll go to the blend tool,
hover over the first one and you'll see an asterisk
in the bottom right corner of the mouse pointer.
Click once to select that line and then the next line
will have a plus sign, and the next one a plus sign,
and the last one a plus sign, so you just want
to click on all four of those lines.
What you see right now may not be the same
as what I'm seeing, so don't worry.
You double click on the blend tool,
select preview so that you can see what's going on
and choose specified steps, and now start increasing
the number of steps and as you do,
you'll see that these lines are blending into each other.
So you're getting some areas where the overlapping
of the lines creates some very dark areas
and some areas which are much lighter.
Now you can experiment with how many steps you want,
there's no hard or fast rule here.
So I think I'm gonna use about 40,
so I'll click okay.
At this point you can go to the direct selection tool,
and click on any of these anchor points in these lines
and just move them.
So if you want to move some of these dark areas
away from each other, you can locate the anchor points
on the lines and just move the lines
to get something even a bit more interesting.
Now I'm gonna settle with what I have here,
but if we have a look in the last panel
you'll see that we've got a blend in the last panel,
a blend and four lines, so we don't actually have
all of these lines as individual objects.
To do that I'm going to make sure I have my blend selected
and choose object and then blend and I'll choose expand.
And that gives me a group with lots of individual
lines in the group.
Now I'm gonna apply a gradient to the stroke on these lines
and I also want to blend them, so at this stage
I'm just gonna ungroup them, so I'll choose object
and then ungroup.
So at this point we just want a whole series of lines.
Now you might be looking at this and wondering
how you're going to see a gradient,
and you probably won't be able to see a gradient
because everything's blue.
So what I'm gonna choose is view and I'll choose hide edges,
and that just turns off that blue colouring.
These lines are still selected, we just can't see
the selections, and that's going to allow us
to apply a gradient and actually see the result.
We just need to remember to turn that setting
back on later on.
So I'm gonna go into swatch libraries
and go to gradients, and here are a whole series
of gradients sort of shipped with Illustrator.
I'm choosing sky, but you can choose
any set of gradients that you like.
And if you don't like the sky when you get to them,
you can just use these arrows to move back through
some of these other gradients that are shipped
with Illustrator, but as I said,
I'm gonna stick with sky.
So I'm gonna click on one of these gradients
and see that this linear gradient is now applied
across my lines.
Now we can tweak the gradient later on,
we just have to find a gradient that we like at this point.
So you can experiment with variants of these gradients
until you find the one that you really like.
I think I'm gonna settle for this one today.
Now at this point the gradient is just being applied
along each individual line,
and we're seeing sort of a buildup of colour
but only up to the original colour in the gradient.
I would like to have these areas even a little bit darker,
and so I'm gonna use a multiply blend mode,
because a multiply blend mode is going to enhance the
colours where these lines are over the top of each other.
So I'm going to the appearance panel,
I still have all of my lines selected.
From the bottom opacity setting you'll see that there's
an opacity for the fill and an opacity for the stroke.
We're gonna choose the opacity for the entire line.
I'm gonna set this to multiply, and so we're getting
these really nice darker areas where
these lines are overlapping,
so this is the before, and this is the much richer
much more interesting after.
Now I'm gonna group those lines back again
because they're going to be easier to handle that way,
so I'll choose object and then group.
Now I just want to show you one thing,
because you may fall foul of this.
I'm going to add a black rectangle here, so I'm going to add
a rectangle the exact size of the art board.
I'm going to fill it with black,
and give it no stroke, and I'm going to align it
to the art board.
Now at the moment it's on top of everything,
so I'm going to place it behind everything
with object, arrange, and send to back.
Now the lines are no longer visible.
And the reason for this is that blend mode that we applied
is actually affecting the interaction of these lines
as between the lines themselves,
but also with the rectangle underneath,
and multiply blend mode just means everything
is turning to black.
So to solve that problem I'm going to reselect
my group of lines, I'm going back
to the appearance panel, I'm going back to this
opacity setting, but this time the opacity setting
is affecting the entire group of objects.
I'm gonna click that open, and there's an option
here called isolate blending.
And what that does is it isolates the blending
to the objects within the group,
but doesn't let that blending affect the group objects
and other objects in the art board.
So this is isolating the blending within the group
and now we're able to see our lines again.
So just be aware of that any time you want
to put lines like these over the top of a,
for example, darker background.
Now as I said before we finish up,
view and then show edges
because we need to be able to see those edges
when we select things in future.
For the next set of lines, I'm gonna show you
a really interesting effect that you can create
with the transform tool.
I'm gonna chose file and then new and just create
a square document, mine's 1200 by 1200 pixels in size.
Now again, I'm gonna turn off the fill here,
I just want a line, and I'm going to the line segment tool
and I'll just draw out a line here
that is somewhere starting around about the middle
of the document, and then just extending part way
across the rest of the document.
So that's the starting point for this line.
And what we're going to do is we're going to create
a sort of radial shape here with this line.
So with it selected I'm gonna choose effect,
distort and transform, and transform.
And this is one of the most fun and really really
valuable tools in illustrator.
So we're gonna start by turning preview on
so we can see what we're doing.
I'm going to set the horizontal and vertical scale
to 97%, so this line as it rotates around
is going to get smaller and smaller.
I'm going to set my angle to 29%
and I'm gonna show you in a minute why that's a really
good setting, and then I'll set the rotation point.
At the moment, the rotation point is in the middle
of the shape but I'm going to select the top left corner
here so it's going to rotate around a central point.
And then I'm going to increase the number of copies
to about 60.
Now the reason why I chose 29 degrees
is that it's throwing everything off a little bit.
If we increase that to 30, we just get all these lines
rotating on top of each other, but when we select
something like 29 or 31, then everything is rotating
in a more interesting manner.
I might just kick my copies up one more
so that I get this area filled in.
So you can experiment with different values
for angle and different values for copies
but you want to get a sort of filled in shape like this.
And at 97%, every one of these lines
is 97% of the length and width of the previous line,
so you're getting this final effect.
I'll click okay.
Now the shape here is really just a line.
When I go to the appearance panel, you see that there's
a transform effect, so this line is just subject
to a transform effect.
So what I want to do is expand this shape
so I'll choose object and then expand appearance,
and if we go to the layers palette,
I'm just pressing F7 to get there,
you'll see that we now have a series of groups.
So I'm going to ungroup these objects with object ungroup
and continue to do that
until ungroup is no longer an option.
So we just have now a series of paths.
And it's time to bring in a gradient fill.
So with this entire series of shapes selected,
I'm going to apply a gradient, and I'm going to make sure
the gradient is going on the stroke,
because that's all we have.
We've got lines but no fills.
I'm gonna set this to a radial gradient.
Now just a heads up, this gradient dialogue
is going to look a little bit different in earlier
versions of Illustrator.
I'm using Illustrator 2019.
There's a new tool in Illustrator 2019,
so don't be surprised if you're using an earlier version
if you don't have those options.
Now I'm gonna press Control or Command + H
just to hide the handle so that we can see
the effect that we've got.
And because we've got a gradient that's going
from black at the tips to white at the middle,
we're losing sort of the middle of these lines
and we're getting this really interesting sort of
almost like a sparkle effect.
Now you could increase the stroke weight a little bit
if you wanted to to get sort of darker shapes here
but this gradient is working really nicely.
The other way around, from black to white,
is going to look very different, but again it might
be a look that you like, it's just for me
I'm preferring this one.
So there is a set of geometric lines
created using a simple transformation,
and they have this really interesting radial gradient
applied to them.
You could take this object for example
and make a pattern out of it,
there are all sorts of things that you can do with it.
You might also make an interesting element
in another design.
For the last design, let's create another landscape
sized document, just so we've got plenty of room to work in.
Mine's 1920 by 1080.
Now I'm going to start with the rectangle tool
and draw a square, so I'm holding the Shift key
as I draw out a square.
I don't want my square to be enormous,
about this size is pretty good,
and it can't have a fill.
So I'm going to apply a rotation to this square,
so I can choose effect, distort and transform,
and then transform.
Now for this rotation I'm going to decrease the size
of each of these squares to 95% of the previous square size.
So we're going to reduce the size quite considerably.
We're going to rotate around the centre point,
and we're going to do a three degree rotation.
So these squares are going to start to rotate
around end to shrink, and so I'm just increasing
then umber of copies, and you can see the effect
that we're creating.
And I'm going to continue to do this
until pretty much I've closed up the middle of this shape
and that's probably in the region of about
100, 120 copies.
Plus we're not going to see very many of them
at the very end, I've actually got 84,
I'm thinking that that's probably going to be okay
for this particular size rectangles,
so I'll just click okay.
So we've got a shape that is a really interesting
sort of rotation effect just done with squares,
each one of them is 95% of the previous one
and each one of them is rotated by three degrees.
Now if we want to break these squares out
into individual shapes, we're gonna run into a bit
of a problem, so I just want to show you what that is.
I'm gonna make a duplicate so that we can
throw out the ones that aren't going to work
when we see what the problem is.
I've got my shape selected, so I'll choose object
and then expand appearance, and if I go to
the last panel, let's see what that's given us.
It's given us a whole series, of grouped objects,
so let's just go and break them out of these groups
and see what the remainder is.
Here we have a series of compound paths,
so what's happened is in expanding out shape,
we ended up with filled shapes
rather than shapes with a stroke on it.
Now because we can apply a gradient to a stroke,
we may prefer not to be working with compound shapes,
because in that case what you've got is that each
of these squares is actually not a stroked square,
it's actually a filled shape and the shape is this line.
So if we don't want compound paths to occur,
then that's not the right way to expand the shape.
So let's have a look at this one instead.
What I'm going to do here is having made my shape,
convinced myself that it's all looking really good,
I'm gonna flip the stroke and the fill
so now I can't see anything but I know
those shapes are there.
Now I'm gonna expand the object
with object expand appearance.
And then I'll choose object ungroup
until ungroup is no longer an option.
Now you'll see that I've got filled paths.
Well I've got filled paths because I've got a fill
applied to it, but I can stroke those filled paths
by just switching the stroke and the path.
And so this time I don't have compound paths.
These are squares that have a stroke around the edge,
so there's a different result,
and it just depends on how you expand these shapes,
whether you expand a stroke shape
or whether you expand a filled shape and then flip
the fill and the stroke after you've don't that.
And I think that's probably a preferable way of doing this.
So now that I've got all my shapes here
I'm just gonna group them back in,
but this time they're just going all those paths
into a single group.
At this point we can apply a gradient to those.
I'm going back to my gradients and this time
I'm probably gonna choose gems and jewels,
so let's just see what we've got here.
Well there's some interesting gradients here.
Again I'm gonna press Control or Command + H
so I can hide the edges and just see more clearly
what's happening here.
With the shapes still selected,
I'm going to switch across here
to a radial gradient, and I'm going to flip my gradient.
You'll probably find that you'd get better result
with lighter areas of the gradient towards the middle.
I'm actually gonna pull that stop off,
and let's just go with those two colours.
Flipping them, the result is very different
and it doesn't seem to be as apparent
that we've actually got a gradient on that shape
but certainly with light toward the right hand side,
we're getting this really interesting look to our shape.
This shape could be made into a pattern for example,
because it's a square, we can just drag and drop it
straight away into the swatches panel here,
so let's go and make a pattern out of that,
we'll have a look at that one in a minute.
But before we do that, let's grab this shape
and let's flip it with object transform
and we'll choose reflect.
I'm gonna turn preview on and I'm gonna reflect it,
it doesn't matter over the horizontal or the vertical.
Either will be just fine, I'll click copy.
Because the result here is that these two shapes
are now flipped over the top of each other
and they form a sort of floral shape.
Now to be a bit neater because they're in groups,
I'm going to choose object ungroup.
I'm going to ungroup all of them, so that's two
sets of objects and now I'm going to regroup them.
Just a little bit neater in the last palette here.
This one, I'm also going to drag
and drop into the swatches panel,
because it too can become a pattern.
So let's see what we've got then.
I've created a rectangle that is the size of the art board,
I'm going to turn off the stroke,
I'm gonna target the fill, and let's have a look
at the first of our patterns.
Of we can scale this by choosing object
and then transform and scale.
Make sure to turn off transform objects,
turn a preview on so you can see what you're doing,
and I'll just take this down to 50%.
And you get this interesting pattern that because of the way
the swirls are occurring, it actually looks like
it's sort of moving, it's on an angle,
it looks like quite a dynamic pattern.
Now with this shape still selected,
let's try the second pattern,
and this is the more floral one.
And this is the result that we're getting with that shape.
Now you can always place a filled shape over the top
of these, let me just show you what I'm thinking.
1920 by 1080, another rectangle the exact same size,
let me go and this time fill it with just a plain colour.
I'm going to square it up over the art board,
and now we can blend this colour filled layer
into the object underneath.
We would just go to the opacity setting for this
and for example select something like screen.
And now we have an interesting interaction between
this colour filled shape over the top of a pattern
filled shape underneath.
Now it's also possible to do other things
gradient wise to this shape.
In Illustrator CC 2019, there is, as I said,
this new gradient tool.
So we could come here and choose a freeform
gradient for this shape.
And there are anchor points here that we could now
set to different colours.
So we could add a darker colour at this corner
of the shape, we could come down here
and add a different colour,
so we could go perhaps a little bit more
into the yellows in this area.
And then come over here, perhaps even move the point,
and adjust the colour here.
Maybe we're going into a slight blue area here.
And again, because we've got this blending,
this underlying blend mode,
the colours in this gradient filled shape
are interacting with the pattern that is underneath.
N ow I'm just gonna wind that back because if you're
working in an earlier version of illustrator
you don't hae that feature.
But let me just show you what you could do.
I've got this top rectangle selected,
let me just make sure in my last panel
that I've got this orange rectangle selected.
I'm gonna choose object and then create gradient mesh,
and I'm gonna do a four by four mesh
because that's fine for right now, I'll click okay.
So we now have the top orange shape divided up
in a four by four grid, so when I hover
with the white arrow tool, the direct selection tool
over one of these points, I can select it.
I'm actually going to Shift + Select another one as well.
Then I'm going to the eye dropper tool
and you can see that its shortcut key is I,
that's gonna help you in just a minute.
And I'm gonna target a different colour for these two points
in the gradient mesh.
So now let's go and select a different set of points,
so I'll select this one over here
and Shift + Select one of these on the edge
and maybe one over here.
And then I'll go and press the letter I
to target the eyedropper tool and go to a darker colour
for these other points.
So you can apply different gradient colours
to this gradient mesh using the gradient mesh tool
in earlier versions of illustrator.
And these points can be dragged around,
so I've got a yellow point here,
so I can move it across, so I can create very similar
gradients to the kind of gradients
that we can create with the new tool in Illustrator CC 2019
but you're doing it with an earlier version of illustrator
using a gradient mesh because you don't have accessibility
to the new gradient feature.
So there are some ways of creating gradient
line art in Illustrator.
I really hope that you've enjoyed learning these
Illustrator techniques.
Please let us know what you think in the comments below
and give us a thumb's up if you enjoyed this tutorial.
Until next time, I'm Helen Bradley for Design Cuts.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét