Adding effects and gradients to shapes

The next part of our landscape project will involve adding a sun to the sky. To accomplish this, we'll use a new shape tool, the Star tool, and add an effect to the shape to make it look a little more like the sun. We'll also use the Rectangle tool to create a sky background for our landscape, and add a gradient to give the background a little more depth.

Applying effects to a shape

As mentioned previously, we'll use the Star tool to create a shape to use for the sun. By default, the Star tool creates a five-pointed star — we'll make the star shape look more like a sun by adding more points to it as we create it. We can accomplish this in the same way we changed the amount of sides for the polygon we created earlier, by using the arrow keys to control how many sides the shape has.

Let's go ahead and add a sun to our landscape drawing. Before we add anything to our artboard, let's make sure nothing is selected and temporarily change our colors back to the default Illustrator stroke and fill colors.

We now have a star with many points on it, similar to the following image:

Next, we'll apply an effect to the shape to make it look like it has rays of light coming off of it. We'll apply the Pucker and Bloat effect to do this. Using an effect to change the appearance of the shape doesn't change the underlying path of the shape — that way, if we want to go back to how the shape looked previously, we can simply remove the effect.

Let's use the Pucker and Bloat effect to transform the star shape into a sun.

The star shape should look similar to the following image:

As shown in the example, the star shape now looks more like a sun with rays of light coming off of it.

NOTE: To remove an effect from a shape, first, select the shape with the Selection tool. Then, in the Panel dock, if necessary, Click on the Appearance panel tab. To remove the effect, in the Appearance panel, Click on the effect's name to select it, and in the lower right corner of the Appearance panel, Click .

Let's go ahead and change the color of the sun to yellow and remove the stroke from the shape.

The sun should look like the following image at this point:

Now we can add the sky to our image.

Adding depth with gradients

While solid colors may work for parts of illustrations, sometimes a different fill effect is needed. In these cases, we can use gradients to give our drawings some depth.

Gradients work by blending colors smoothly into one another, thereby giving the object the appearance of either roundness or depth. This way, we can add some visual interest to an object.

In this section, we will apply a gradient to our background to make it appear like a pleasant blue sky. To do this, we will create a custom gradient and apply it to the background.

Designing a Custom Gradient

Illustrator comes with several default gradient effects for us to use, but we may want to use a different gradient than the preset ones Illustrator provides.

The Gradient panel allows us to select the colors in a gradient, as well as the spacing between them, in order to create a custom gradient effect. We also can choose between a linear gradient and a radial gradient. In a linear gradient, one color blends seamlessly into the next in a linear fashion. In a radial gradient, the color starts in the middle, and blends out in a circular pattern to the edges of the shape. The following examples help illustrate the difference between linear and radial gradients:

Let's familiarize ourselves with the Gradient panel before we start creating the gradient background. First, we'll want to ensure nothing is selected on our artboard, so we don't inadvertently add the gradient to an existing item. We'll also want to make sure we set the gradient to be used as an object's fill instead of its stroke. Then, we'll open up the Gradient panel and take a look at its contents.

The Gradient panel appears:

In the upper left corner of the panel, we see the gradient swatch, which shows what our gradient will look like if we were to apply it to an object right now. Underneath that is another set of the stroke and fill swatches, allowing us to choose what part of a shape we want to apply the gradient to. Below the Stroke and Fill swatches, we have the reverse gradient button, which allows us to quickly reverse the orientation of our gradient. On the upper right side of the panel, we see the gradient type buttons — here, we can choose from linear, radial, and freeform gradients. We can also change the angle of our gradient in the Gradient panel. Across the bottom of the panel is the gradient slider, which is where we can adjust the colors in our gradient.

Let's take a moment to activate the gradient slider, then we'll learn more about how it's used to create a gradient.

Now that the Gradient Slider is active, we see little circles of color underneath the slider, as shown in the following image:

Each of these circles is referred to as a color stop, and we can have as many of them as we wish in our gradient. By default, when creating a new gradient, the slider shows the minimum amount of color stops underneath the slider, with white on the left side and black on the right. When we double-click one of those color stops, a sub-panel will appear that will allow us to change the color used for that specific color stop.

One thing to note about the Gradient panel is that when working with the default black and white gradient, the color mode is set to grayscale as Illustrator isn't using any colors in this default gradient. We'll need to switch our color mode to one that allows us to work with many colors, rather than just shades of black and white. We'll be using the CMYK color mode, which is optimized for printing.

The Gradient Slider should now look similar to the following image:

The gradient we just made is also visible in the fill swatch that appears in the Tools panel, Swatches panel, and Gradient panel. We're now ready to make the rectangle that will serve as the sky in our landscape drawing. After doing that, we may need to change the angle of our gradient so that the blue appears at the top of our rectangle.

Now we have a sky for our landscape drawing — however, it's covering up all the other parts of the scene. We'll fix this, and in the process gain a better understanding of how Illustrator places objects on our artboard.

Arranging objects in Illustrator

Currently our sailboat, pond, and sun are lost behind the rectangle we created to use for the sky. This is easily fixable, though — all we need to do is adjust the stacking order of our objects.

In Illustrator, each object is assigned it's own sub-layer. These sub-layers are stacked on top of one another in the order in which we created our objects. When we create a new object on our artboard, it will always be stacked on top of the older objects. We can control the order of the layers and which object appears on top of other objects through the Arrange option in the Object menu.

There are four ways in which we can arrange our objects:

• • Bring Forward: This brings the selected object forward one step in the stacking order of objects.
  • Send Backward: This sends the selected object backward one step in the stacking order of objects.
  • Bring to Front: This puts the object at the top of the stack of objects.
  • Send to Back: This puts the object at the bottom of the stack of objects.

Let's use our newfound understanding of Illustrator's stacking order to send the sky to the back of our layer stack.

The rectangle moves to the back, and we can see the other elements on the artboard again. Our landscape drawing should now look similar to the following.

Since we're finished with our landscape, we can save and close the file.

Next, we'll focus on creating some basic logos using the shape tools.