Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

21.

Save your changes. Choose File→Save As or press Ctrl+Shift+S

(-Shift-S). Name your fi nal fi le “Final clipped robot.ai,” and

click the Save button. For the sake of comparison, I’ve included

my fi nal fi le (shown in Figure 7-37) as Translucent robot.ai, as

ever inside the Lesson 07 folder.

CS5’s Draw Inside mode notwithstanding, blends and clipping

masks have changed little since they were introduced back in 1988.

And yet they continue to rank among Illustrator’s most powerful

capabilities. I for one can’t imagine drawing without them.

Creating and Editing a Gradient Mesh

Having spent four exercises on blends and masks and reserving just

one for gradient mesh, you might infer some preference on my part

for the former. Yes and no. However ancient they may be, blends

and masks offer a terrifi c bang for the buck. You can accomplish

an outstanding amount of work in a few minutes. In contrast,

Illustrator’s gradient mesh function is more powerful—dare I say,

Figure 7-37 .

226

Lesson 7: Blends, Masks, and Gradient Mesh

Figure 7-38 .

more nuanced—but it demands a higher degree of attention in re-

turn. This is no in-and-out feature. Fleshing out a single gradient

mesh may require a half hour of your time, oftentimes more. Suffi ce

it to say, once you begin, you’re in it for the long haul.

Good news: In exchange for your efforts, you can fi ll a path with

a matrix of anchor points, every one of which links to four of its

neighbors. And not only does each point represent a potentially

unique color, but you can use control handles to defi ne the direc-

tion and speed of the transitions. Bad news: Well, same thing. You

reign supreme over a dazzling array of point-to-point gradients. If

you delighted in my discussion of the pen tool in Lesson 3, you’ll

love gradient mesh. If not, you may fi nd yourself overwhelmed by it.

Which is why I use the same illustration that I featured in Lesson 3—

the Mishipizheu of Ojibwe lore—as a jumping-off point. Those of

you who are psyched, get ready to have some fun. Those of you

who are psyched out, have no fear. We’ll work through it together.

1. Open an image that contains a gradient. Open the

fi le called Mish again.ai in the Lesson 07 folder. Notice

that I’ve added a few paths since we last saw this il-

lustration, not to mention a handful of gradients in and around

the creature and an enclosing frame, as pictured in Figure 7-38.

P E A R L O F W I S D O M

Although I’ve tried to be very careful to provide

highly specifi c instructions throughout this

exercise, don’t feel obligated to exactly follow

them. If your gradient mesh includes one less

column or one more row, or you decide to color

or position your points and control handles

differently than mine, more power to you. The

purpose is to learn how to use Illustrator’s gradient

mesh feature, not slavishly match my results.

227

Creating and Editing a Gradient Mesh

2.

Inspect the background gradient. Exposed in the background,

the original painting exhibits a series of green and red rivers

running through fi elds of yellow and orange. In an attempt to

mimic the fl ow (if not the arrangement) of these colors, I’ve cre-

ated a base gradient. To check it out, do as follows:

• In the Layers panel, click in the fi rst column to the left of

the Gradient layer (second from bottom) to turn it on. Il-

lustrator displays a rectangle fi lled with a linear gradient.

• Click the Gradient layer’s  to twirl it open. Meatball the

path called Color Rivers to select it.

•

Press the G key to select the gradient tool. Then hover your

cursor over the gradient annotator to expose a series of seven

color stops. Reading from bottom-left to top-right, these

color stops are orange, yellow, green, red, green, orange,

and fi nally red again, as shown in Figure 7-39.

Illustrator offers two ways to create a gradient mesh. The fi rst

is to select a shape and choose Object→Create Gradient Mesh.

The program assigns a mesh to the shape, but it provides only

Figure 7-39 .

228

Lesson 7: Blends, Masks, and Gradient Mesh