Category: Illustrator

Create Blends in Illustrator

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Illustrator

Making a blend is super quick:

  1. Draw two wavy lines with the pen or pencil tool to do this. Double-click to bring up the settings for these and set the smoothing up high for smooth curves).
  2. Select both sets of lines then go to Options>Blend. Select Colours or Steps. I selected Steps and entered 7 but the number of copies to make is up to you.
  3. Then go to Options>Blend>Make to see the effect.
  4. Play with different effects, eg, select the blend and go to Object>Expand and apply a gradient.

Sometimes the ends look straggly – select the Direct Selection tool and grab the end point anchors, align them so they centre horizontally and vertically and taper them. You can also pinch in other sections of the blend if you want to tweak the design.

You can create separate blends and join them together by going to Object>Expand  then selecting each pair of end points in turn and using  Anchor>Connect  to join them. This enables you to apply a single gradient over the whole graphic. Not for the faint hearted if your blend is made from a large number of steps, though.

🙂

Create a Segmented Wave in Illustrator

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Illustrator

The curvy path in the picture is made up of little segments that can be reflected and aligned to create a curvy path. Each segment can be scaled up or down to create interest and impact. You can unite them using Pathfinder to create a single colour or gradient wave.

The tutorial is for Illustrator CC but I think all the functionality to do it is in CS6 and maybe earlier :):

make-segmented-waveDownload