Adobe Illustrator Gradients

Using Adobe Illustrator Gradients is a joy. Understanding how to get them to work you want them to work is a chore.

I love gradients. When I first discovered them back in 1993, I fell in love with them. At that period in my life I was one of the first children’s books illustrators to use the computer to create the images for my books. I applied a gradient to every object in every image. It was so easy and it made every object come to life in my illustrations.

If you are new to computer graphics, you may be asking, “What is a gradient?”

A gradient is where you choose two colors, and make the two colors, “fade” into one another over a space. This is how light works in real life. If you look at someone’s face, depending on where the light is on that person’s face, there are light spots and dark spots. Maybe I should say light colors and dark colors.

If a person is standing under a light, their forehead is a bright skin tone, and under their chin is a darker shade of the same color that is on their forehead.

Or, if you look at a silver light pole on the street, if the sun is out, the side of the light pole closest to the sun is bright, maybe even white. On the other side of the light pole, the sun has not lit, so it is dark. This side is perhaps a dark shade of gray.

For an artist drawing with paints perhaps, they must use colors, painting from the left side to the right side using their paints to gradually get darker going from one side to the other. If you look and any work of art, or even any photo from your cell phone you will see the shades of light.

Using gradients, you can bring the illusion of light to your artwork.

Enjoy Adobe Illustrator Gradients the video.

Click here to see the video.