Abstract Gradients in Adobe Illustrator: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Organic Vibrant Artworks

1. Introduction & Class Overview: Gradient mashes make a fantastic base for creating exciting and trendy abstract artworks and designs! And when you work methodically, you can easily develop even rather complex compositions with beautiful color transitions and elaborate organic distortions. Hey guys, my name is Evgeniya Righini-Brand, I am a graphic designer at Attitude Creative, and experimenting with gradient-based designs in Adobe Illustrator has been one of my favorite creative playgrounds for years. I teach a popular Skillshare class, Mastering Gradients in Adobe Illustrator, where amongst other things, I covered the basics of working with gradient meshes and tips and tricks for distorting them in an experimental manner. And in this class, I'm excited to share with you a different, more intentional approach to working with gradient meshes and break down my complete process of creating exciting, vibrant, abstract gradient artworks. Following this class, you will be able to create your own sophisticated abstract gradient artworks by gaining an understanding of what goes into creating this type of work, how you can split the process into clear manageable steps, and how you can use a range of Adobe Illustrator tools to develop your meshes into captivating designs. In this class, I will step-by-step guide you through all the stages, including developing the structure of distortions with smooth controllable shapes in the mesh, creating exciting vibrant color transitions and refining the composition, integrating solid graphic elements into the mesh to elevate the work, give it more dimension and add a personal stylistic touch, and I'll finish it off with tips for enhanced your work, and saving it for print and digital use. If you're a designer, illustrator, or an artist who loves the look of abstract, organic colorful artworks and would like to create your own to use in digital or print projects, to sell as art prints, or to decorate a physical space or create digital wallpapers, this is the class for you! Whilst the step-by-step nature of this class will allow you to follow the process regardless of your level, for the best experience, you will need to know your way around Adobe Illustrator and have some understanding of the principles of creating vector artworks are working with the colors and gradients in the digital environment. I'm super excited to let you in on how I create my abstract mesh-based designs and cannot wait to see what this class inspires you to create! So join me in this class, and let's make something awesome! 2. Class Project & Giveaway: There are a few different ways you can go about distorting the meshes and shaping them into the composition. You're after from more experimental and playful approaches where sometimes you don't quite know what you'll end up creating. The more intentional and control development of the distortions to create the desired shapes. I'm predictability and complexity of the results created using the experimental techniques have their own charm and appeal. But working with the meshes in a considered and methodical manner helps to avoid getting overwhelmed when creating distortions and getting all the shapes and color transitions to your liking. And that's how we'll be developing our artwork in this class. For your class project, follow the stages I'll be going through in this class and create your own abstract measure based artwork. Don't try to close the recreate the composition I will be creating is it can become counterproductive. And instead, let your creativity flow experiment with creating any composition you like and just use the tips, techniques, and workflow I oversharing to develop your work in your role unique direction. Because gradients are all about the colors I have shared with you. My favorite color swatches, which have proven to work really well in blend into beautiful gradients. So don't hesitate to download them from the projects and resources tab for this class. Use them in your work to get going with your project, pasta. Share your final artwork alone is the development stages by creating a project in the project and resources tab for this class. I always super excited to see your work here, how you're planning to use it. To celebrate your creativity and the launch of this class. We'll be running a giveaway, often a year of Skillshare membership to participate. Post a project in this class, leave a class review and follow us on Skillshare. To increase your chance of winning by being entered into the draw twice. You can also share the work you create on Instagram. Tag us at Attitude Creative and use the hashtag abstract gradients with attitude. So we can easily find your post and share your work with our Instagram. Community. Entry deadline is at noon Eastern Standard Time. On Sunday, second of October 2022. The winner will be drawn at random and announced the following day. I cannot wait to see your projects and good luck. Now without further ado, let's get on with the class. 3. Getting Started: Let's start by creating a new document. I usually create my gradient designs in a template file. But let me quickly show you what document settings I use. Normally I work on to fold and by default, or pixel art boards in RGB color mode. And with the raster effect set to 300 ppi to make grain, which I usually add to texture my work look nice and small. And these settings allow me to create pretty large artwork when it is exported in the roster at 300 DPI, the art board of these sides. So these are my recommended settings. Now I'm quickly going to name my future document. And click Create. Because I'm starting with my template. Before I can start creating, I need to load my color swatches. So first of all, I will delete all of these color swatches, which will load it by default because I won't be using them. And then I'll go to the swatch libraries menu and find my gradient color swatches. Now I'm going to select all of them and add them to the documents, swatches like this. You can download these swatches from the cluster resources and try using the same colors in your work if you want. So let's close this panel. Since now, everything I need is in the swatches panel. Whilst working on my artwork, I will be using the swatches panel, the color panel, which I usually set to HSB to be able to easily adjust the colors. Then out in the transparency panel because I'm going to be working with the opacity masks. And of course, I will need the layers panel. So to make it easier to follow along your workspace up the same way. Now, it is a good idea to save this new document. So you can simply hit Save from time to time whilst working and not worry about specifying the location or the filename. Later. Check that the format is set to ai. And hit Save next week and start creating our artwork. 4. Setting Up the Gradient Mesh: As a basis for this artwork, we will be using a gradient mesh. So the first thing we need to do is select the rectangle tool and create a square covering the whole art board which will contain the mesh. Let's set the fill color of the square root to black, stroke to none. Then we can create our mesh manually using the mesh tool. But to make it faster to get started, let's go to the Object menu and select create gradient mesh. In this dialog, you can set up your mesh to have some gradation of colors. And I like starting with grayscale gradient meshes because they're super fast to set up and allow me to concentrate on shapes and distortions without getting distracted by needing to assign colors to the color stops, working on some specific color transitions. And removing the colors from the equation and using just the shades of gray to begin with, is it really liberating? I recommend keeping your mesh is relatively simple to begin with. There's just six or seven rows and columns. I'll use seven because there's just a little bit more room for experimentation with all these black areas around white in the middle and a couple of shades of gray in between. This look is created by the appearance settings here. And you can invert it if you want. But I will select the center option, because compositionally, I prefer working when I've got darker colors at the edges and highlights in the middle to begin with. And it is just a matter of preference because these colors will be used just for working with the structure of the mesh. In any case, in the wound feature in the final artwork. If you want to have more contrast in your mesh and gradation from pure white to black. So the highlights here to 100 per cent. Now we can click Okay to create the mesh. After creating my gradient mesh, I usually quickly create a copy as a backup. So I won't need to recreate it. If I mess something up, then it roll back to the beginning. Then I'll quickly rename this layer so my document is a little bit tidy. Now I'm ready to start working with the mesh. So create and set up your mesh in a similar way. And then let's move on to distorting it. 5. Creating Initial Mesh Distortions: The majority of my experimental designs are created by distorted meshes. And working with the various distortion tools, e.g. the warp tool, twirl tool, or wrinkle. And whilst it is actually a lot of fun working with these tools, it is also a very experimental and sometimes quite unpredictable process when you start mixing various tools together. Also when using the distortion tools, in most cases, you will be creating extra points in your mesh, which can get quite difficult to control if you want to start manually modify your mesh. Because you have many more mesh points to select and work with. You can totally use any of these tools if you want to create something a little bit more messy and experimental. And if you do, don't hesitate to check out my class mastering Gradients in Adobe Illustrator, where I share in detail how to set up and use these tools. But in this class, I'm going to show you how to work with gradient meshes more intentionally and create the desired distortions manually using the direct selection tool, the anchor point tool, and the mesh tool. I want to create a composition with elements which look like they're sort of mountain or hanging over each other or something cave-like. But also with smooth curves. For this, I'll start by using the direct selection tool. And for all the class, I will be using shortcuts for the direct selection, anchor point and the mesh tool. And you can find this shortcut cheat sheet in the class resources if you need to memorize them. And you will see the shortcuts popup in the corner of the screen when I switch tools. So I'm going to start distorting my gradient mesh using the direct selection tool and move in a few points to create some interesting and organic shapes in the mesh. And the great thing about the direct selection tool is that it allows you to select and work with multiple mesh points at once, which makes it faster to reposition a lot of points. If you need to adjust the composition. Apart from squash and the mesh points together. You can also overlap mesh lines to create these ridges, which allow to create some interests in three-dimensional shapes in your work. We're one part appears like it is overhanging. In other part. And this is a general technique I'll be using to create the initial composition with some organic shapes in the mesh. So during this stage, I will just move in some points around. And I'm not going to worry about the colors or even the shades of gray yet. Because all I need to do here now is create some interesting structure in the mesh and a basic three-dimensional look. If you start seeing some graphic defects in your mesh where you have overlapped the mesh lines. It is best to straightaway fix these issues by moving the points apart and working with the handles, which adjusts the curves to make everything smoother. So there are less issues to worry about later. So it is a bit longer process than working with the distortion tools. But because you control what you're doing and you're not creating any additional points. It allows you to shape your mesh is more predictability and precision. So these are my initial distortions, which I'm quite happy with. And before I distorted this mesh any further, I'm going to create a copy as a backup and save the document just in case. To distort this much filler. I will be using the anchor point tool and playing around with the handles. The great thing about the anchor point tool is that you can work with the individual handles like this, which allows to create more fun, interesting transitions. So here I'm just moving around different handles one after another, and checking what I can pull where and what effect it creates. It's not necessarily super predictable. Although you can learn what to expect when you move handled in a certain way in relation to the other handled and mesh lines. But still, this process is more about experimentation and just move in Handel's, see what happens. And I'm doing steps. If something doesn't work as desired, there is no right or wrong. You just need to play around. And what I like about this process is that unlike when working with a distortion tools, you have much more control over what you're creating. And whilst it takes more time, you can create more intentional shapes and transitions in your measures. You don't need to move all of the handles for each point. And in most cases, moving just one or two handles for most points is good enough to begin with. So just experiment and see where it takes you. And remember that you are creating something abstract here. So don't worry if it doesn't look like what do you have in mind? Because it will be exciting either way. Because we're distorting the mash menu only and only have the anchor points which were originally in the mesh. There are not so many points to work with. It is not too overwhelming. And there are no extra points to distract you. Just hip. Also working with just the shades of gray which were in the mesh to begin with. And not worrying about the colors or even other shades of gray helps to concentrate on developing the flow of the shapes and creating a 3-dimensional effect. Measures can look super complex. But the limiting, what you concentrate on during each stage of the process really helps to get things done faster and not get overwhelmed with all the different aspects of the artwork. At the same time. I will be changing some colors of the color stops to other shades of gray a little later to see how I can use them to add more details and emphasize more shapes in the mesh. But it can wait for now. It is best not to get distracted and not spend any time assigning any colors. So this is the second stage. For now. There might be a few minor issues here, but I can address them during the next stage. So again, I will create a copy of this mesh for backup and carry on distorting it further. So far, I have only worked with the Direct Selection and Anchor Point tool. Now I'm going to switch to the mesh tool and move a few points around. And the cool thing about the mesh tool is that if you hold down the Shift key, you can move the mesh points on top of one of the lines it sits on, which allows you to make minor adjustments to the mesh. And at this point, I'm just moving the mesh points around, then not adding any new points and mesh lines to avoid making my mesh more complex than it needs to be. This area here got a little bit too messy. So again, I'm going to switch to the anchor point tool and play around with the handles a little bit more to make everything here a little bit smaller. Generally to tidy up your mesh, you need to work with the handles of the adjacent mesh points and move them around and avoid overlapping them with each other or with the mesh lines. And just move things around and see what works and what allows you to create a smooth result and avoid graphic defects. It might take some tweaking and go in-between different handles. But you'll get there with a little bit of practice. This already is looking quite good, but I'm going to move a few more points around to adjust some of the transitions and play around with the handles a little bit more to create more interesting shapes in the mesh. And if it gets a bit too messy, like here, I can reset the handles by using the anchor point tool and dragging the mouse from the mesh point. And this will create a set of handles in the default cross position, which helps to eliminate some of the graphic issues. And now I can tweak the handles a little bit more to adjust the shapes and add more depth to the mesh. So I'm pretty happy with the general distortions so far. And there is no need to overdo it because it is just the beginning. So get your distorted mesh to a similar stage. And next we can move on to the next stage and start changing the colors of some of the color stops in different shades of gray to create some more pronounced shapes in the mesh. 6. Adding More Depth & Detail: Your mesh at this stage met already look quite good. But it is always a good idea to spend a little bit of time changing the colors of some of the color stops to differentiate, agree to develop the mesh structure in a little bit further. Get the shapes in the mesh look more detailed and allow for a more varied recoloring during the later stages. Because I have started with the mesh which had four white color stops around the center. I want to play around with changing the colors of the color stops here and try to create more color transitions. And the more depth. Again, I'm going to copy my mesh for backup and start analyzing which color stops. I need to change. I quite like this highlight here, but because they are free or the color stops next, it colored in the same white color, changing the color of one of them. In this case, this one will allow to create more transitions in U-shapes in the mesh. So I'm going to try out a few different grayscale color swatches in, make this area slightly darker like this. And to increase the contrast and emphasize this shape, I'm going to make this color stop lighter instead. Generally, to bring out the shapes in your mesh. And to create more exciting transitions, you need to have some contrast between the adjacent colors stops, but not necessarily a huge amount. So look for the areas and stops which like contrast. Try changing them to different shades of gray and see how it affects your mesh. Again, it is a quiet experimental process. So I'm going to play around with making some of the color stops lighter and some darker. And the main objective of this stage is to develop the composition further and generally to make them look more detailed and more four-dimensional, behave in a larger variety of shades of gray in it. Also, make sure that you don't neglect the color stops at the edges of your mesh because they can allow you to develop the transitions even further and create a more even the composition which will make your entire artwork look more considered. So I'm pretty happy with the range of shades of gray and transitions so far. But because now there are a few new visible shapes in the mesh. Next, I'm going to work with the mesh points and handles a little bit more just to further develop some of the shapes and to eliminate any graphic defects which have cropped up in the process. So now this mesh looks considerably more detailed. There are no defects left. When developing your work. You can totally stop here. It was the actual mesh structure development. Then move on to adding the colors of your choice for your work. But I want to play around with the mesh a little bit more to make a few further adjustments to its structure. So in the next part, I will share with you how I go about analyzing distortions and tidy up the mesh to get it ready for recoloring. 7. Finalising Distortions: Manually distorted meshes is great to begin with as it allows you to keep everything under control. Then look to over populate your mesh with any extra points. But after you have developed the general composition of the distorted shapes, this is a good idea to very gently use some of the distortion tools to fill it. Develop your artwork. Again before I just store this mesh any further, let's quickly create a copy of this mesh at the stage. Can save this file. As you can see, I'm really into baking up every stage in the same document. And I really recommend you do the same, both to be able to easily roll back to the previous stage if necessary, and also to see how you work develops. Now I need to select this new mesh. And I'm going to continue my experiments with the Warp tool. Let's quickly check its settings. Set the detail value to one, intensity to 20 per cent, simplicity to 50 per cent and apply changes. Now I'm going to make the distortion brush a little bit larger by dragging the mouse and holding down the Alt and Shift keys. Now start moving and pushing things around the art board to see how it can distort the shapes and open up this area around the middle. And being able to change the distortion brush size on the goal makes it very easy to control how much of the mesh is affected by the distortion tool. So just a little bit of work, and I'm much happier with how this is looking in comparison to the previous stage. But there are a few new graphing defects here caused by moving the mesh points and lines around, which I need to fix the usual way. You can also spot there if you knew points on the mesh now, which were created by the warp tool and just move points to work with. And that's why using the distortion tools is best left to this stage in the process. And keeping only the essential points in your mesh for easier manual development. And the earliest stages. I don't mind some of the rougher transitions here because they add more dimension to the work and don't look particularly glitchy. But if you don't have much patience for sorting all of these issues out, try to keep your mesh as simple as possible and go light. It was the distortion tools. Also, if you get a little too messy with too many additional points, you can always delete some of them using the Delete Anchor Point tool, which can help you eliminate some of the graphic defects. At this point, it is a good idea to address all obvious graphic issues or play around with the areas which don't look quite right. So I will carry on working as the points and the curve handles to make everything in this area look a little smoother. And sometimes when you're trying to make things better, they actually can get worse. So in this case, it is best to undo a few steps. Just try again, like I'm doing here. So now this is looking better. But this area here could do with an extra mesh point to make it darker and add more volume to these shapes. So again, I'm going to quickly create a copy of this stage for backup. And then select the mesh tool and add a new mesh point in this area. In change it to a darker color. So this edit more volume, so this area. But straight away, there are a few more visible defects which I need to go and fix the usual way when moving the points and the handles around until this area looks smooth. So keep in mind that when you start adding new points or changing the colors, or even just tighten things up in one area. Some graphic defect might pop up in a different area dependent on how the distortions go into your mesh. So you need to pay attention to what you're doing and carefully go through different areas of your mesh. Makes sure that everything is as smooth and clean as you want it to be. So all these shapes here look quite good to me. But usually what I like to do is pick just a fragment of my distorted gradient mesh, use it for the final artwork. So I'm going to create another copy of this mesh. Then I'm going to scale it up and play around with position it on the art board, rotating it and see which part of the mesh works best. This will do for now. But I want to create another copy of it and see whether I can distort it a little bit more with the Warp tool just to develop the shapes in the mesh a little bit further. I wouldn't recommend playing around with a distortion tools after tidying up your mesh. But hey, I will be careful here in the US, not very big distortion brush size, and try not to make my mesh all messy again. So this will do when you feel that you are almost done. Be sure to look at your mesh overall and see if there are any areas which might benefit from a little bit more contrast. E.g. this area is looking a little flap. So I'm going to experiment with changing this color stop to a darker shade of gray. And it looks so much better now. So now it's time for one final inspection of the whole mesh. I'm not super happy about this area here. So I'm going to try to sort it out. And this is definitely better. Now, I'm pretty happy with this mesh. And I'm just going to reposition a little bit on the art board like this. My whole process involves a lot of little tweaks. But if you are not as pedantic and perfectionist as I am, you might be able to progress faster. Remember that this is an abstract artwork, so it is completely up to you how clean or messy it is. So finalize your distorted mesh in shades of gray. And next, we can move on to the fun part of color in it. 8. Initial Recolouring: Now is the structure or the black and white gradient mesh ready? We can start experimenting with color in it by changing the colors of the color stops in the mesh. Two different colors from the color swatches. But first, to keep my developmental layers easier to navigate, I'm going to create a separate new layer, name it development, and put it underneath the design layer. Then I'm going to create a copy of these latest mesh to work with. In drug all my black and white developmental meshes want on my new layer and then the lock and hide it. So they still in this document in case I need them. But separate from the following color development stages. To recolor your gradient mesh in the colors from the color groups in the swatches panel. You can either manually assign different colours to the mesh points or you can use the recolor artwork tool to get them done faster. And that's what they usually use for the initial recoloring. Let's open the Advanced Options. And here, select one of the color groups from our swatches. And these colors will replace the shades of gray in the mesh. And my favorite thing here is swapping the colors around using this button and seeing how it changes the look of my mesh. It is also worth quickly trying out other color groups, since we haven't got quite a few cycle for the colors to see different options. When you settle on the color group, which you want to use, start to slowly change the order of the colors so you don't miss the spread of the colors, which you like. Changing colors this way is quite fun and sometimes can allow you to create the desired coloring really effortlessly, end quickly. But in some cases, it might not work as well as you would like. E.g. if you don't have a lot of different shades of gray in your original black and white mesh. Or if you don't have enough colors in your color groups to replace all of the shades of gray in your mesh. Also, there are color reduction options which can be accessed via this button, which will affect how the Recolor and is applied. E.g. these are the settings I have used which determine how the genes are treated in. You can try other options and see how they affect your particular org. I also have preserved black and white checked here. So then automatically recolored T beginning. And after swapping all other colors and achieving the desired effect, I can turn on the recoloring for these colors like this. And I will manually assign a color from my swatches to replace my black color using the one of the darkest blue swatches I've got, which will keep it aligned with the color theme and preserve it as the darkest color in the work at the same time. As for white. I won't touch it for now and keep my highlights white. In this color can be replaced with some off-white color from my swatches later, if necessary. The stage of recoloring, there's just the basis for the future development. Unless of course, you managed to stumble upon some really cool color during this stage already. When you are generally happy with the distribution of the colors, hit Okay to apply recoloring. But don't save changes to your swatch groups. In this dialogue pops up. And after doing this quick initial recoloring using the recolor artwork tool. Next, we need to refine color transitions by manually changing the colors of some of the color stops. 9. Refining Colour Transitions: After recoloring your work, you might notice some weird things happen in your mesh which you will want to fix. But first, it's better not to get distracted. And start by manually changing the colors of some of the color stops, which don't blend tool and don't create the desired transitions with the neighboring colors. E.g. I. Am going to start by trying out different dark blue and purple swatches to replace some of the darker colors in the mesh to create cleaner transitions. Also, I've got a load of not super plays in dark colors around the edges of my mesh. So I'm going to replace them with someone in a little more vibrant. Be sure not to neglect the color stops at the edges of your mesh. Even if you might be using just a fragment of the mesh in your final artwork. Because all of these color stops will affect the transitions you see on the art board. So play around with the edge colors. You can see how you can add some more font color into your work around its edges. Avoid any dirty transitions. So with the edges of the mesh looking much more vibrant. Now, I can move on to working on some areas within the mesh where the colors don't mix well together. And before I get on with more menu recoloring, again, I'm going to quickly create a copy of my mesh. Then I will switch to the direct selection tool. Then starts recolor in some of the color stops, which look odd. E.g. here, I don't like how these blue color blends the colors around. So I will try some other colors which will also help me bring this shape out. This will do for now. Next, because I want this area to be sort of a focal point in my work. I need to spend some time making it look smaller in January, make it stand out. So I will play around with changing the colors and also work with the points and handles. And remove some extra points which mess things up. So if you're planning to have a focal point in your composition and January, dependent on how much you have distorted, you mesh. You might need to spend some time playing around with this structure a little bit more after recoloring it to get the look you like. Now this is a much more interesting shape. I also would like this shape to appear more vertical. So I will quickly rotate the mesh a little bit this way. And then proceed with more than the points around until I like how it looks. So this area is done. And now I'm going to play around with other color stops to create more exciting and cleaner transitions. Whilst I have a lot of colors in my color groups, they can also use some tins of some other global color swatches. If I need to create lighter versions of these colors, which will nicely blend together with the other colors. So at this stage, I would just go around the mesh, have a look at different color stops to bring out some shapes and add depth. And also adjust any issues which are caused by changing colors are moving the points. This is all about refining the color transitions in your mesh and making sure that the colors which are next to each other blend nicely together. Then there are no dirty America transitions. And to speed up the process, at this stage, I usually just go through my color swatches, can see what blends well and adjust tens of some of the colors if necessary. Another thing you need to pay attention to when recoloring your mesh is what happens to the shapes. We should have spent time refining in shades of gray. So play around with the color stops in the areas which were supposed to be shadows. And bring back the brightness to the areas which are supposed to be lighter. And adjust any adjacent areas to bring out the shapes and create nicer color transitions. On the go crazy, adjusting a lot of color stops and just concentrate on the obvious areas which lacked detail and contrast will have some random spot of colors. We don't blend too well with the surrounding areas. And changing just a few color stops can help make the composition more detailed and dynamic. Add more depth to it. When you change some of the color stops to a very contrasty color, you can straight away, see some oranges, which can make your work more dynamic. So you just need to play around, experiment and see how it goes. But of course, you don't need to take it as far as I am doing here. And if you're happy with how your work looks, even right after you have recolored it using the recolor artwork tool and change just a few colors, stops many early. You can stop there. So this looks quite good, but I think there is room for developing this mesh a little bit further. But I will do it with a copy of the mesh yet again, just in case I mess something up. So let's add a few extra mesh points to add a little bit more variety and more shapes to the composition. And spend a little bit more time finalizing the colors and making sure that there are no default colors created in the mesh, which are usually not the purest colors and can spoil the overall brightness of the work. And then generally look through all different colors stops. You can see how the colors work together. Whether I need to balance certain areas up, e.g. by making some areas darker and some brighter, or bringing in some different hues to different areas. E.g. I. Will add a few more blue areas to my artwork to make it all work better together. So this looks quite good. And now I want to reposition the whole mash on the art board to see what area I can use in my final artwork. Now, you can see a few more little things which I want to fix in my focal area. So I'll go and play around a little bit more with the curves in the mesh and move the points around and change the colors just to get this area looking as nice as I possibly can. So I'm getting a little too pedantic here. But paying attention to these sort of little details really helps to develop the work a little bit further and finalize certain areas which might have been neglected before. Refine the color transitions and tweak the structure of the mesh if required. And then let's move on to develop in their work filter by finalizing all of the shapes and transitions within the art-board format. 10. Finalising Colouring: After doing the initial color in, the next step is to work with the mesh elements within the format of the artboard and develop the composition without getting distracted by any elements which will feature in the final artwork. So first of all, I'm going to duplicate my gradient mesh and move all of the previous stages of the development layer. At this point, the file might get a little bit heavy. So if you want, you can save a corporate with all of the developmental meshes as a separate file. Only keep your latest stage of the gradient mesh in your working file. Just to make it a little bit easier for illustrator to handle. To see how the part of your mesh works within the art boards format. You can either put your mesh inside a clipping mask in a shape of your own word. Or you can go to the View menu and select Trim View here, which will hide anything which falls outside your artboard. Switch into the Trim View only just now is really important. Because if you switch to it earlier, you might miss some of the points in your mesh. You can keep them colored in some unconsidered colors, which will feed into your design from the edges and might make the transitions look dirty and not very nice. With everything beyond the art board boundaries hidden. Now you can start paying more attention to what is happening at the edges of your earned word and how various shapes work within the composition. And most likely at this stage, you will want to reposition your mesh within the art board to get the composition look in a more considered. Now, working as the mesh points which fall within the art board, you can experiment further with the colors to make your whole composition work better color wise. To add more volume to it by introducing more contrast in colors to shade or highlight the shapes. You might also find some areas close to the edges of your art board, which didn't stand out before within the full mesh, but which now look like they could be developed in a little further. E.g. like these shapes I have in this corner. So if necessary, play around with the mesh points and handles a little bit more to get all of the areas in your work look considered. Now I am pretty happy with this area. And next, I'm going to go around the edges and see what else I can change to make the colors and shapes at the edges of the art board look more exciting. Depart from trying different color swatches. At this stage, I also like to adjust the colors using the HSB sliders. If my team like a pedantic process, given that they have a lot of swatches to use. But making minor adjustments to colors which you have in your swatches can really help to fine-tune the color transitions and make the colors than the Better Together. If you have some air in your work, which stands out for no good reason. And since underdeveloped, e.g. like this area here, this is a good time to finalize it by working with the structure of the mesh in changing the colors to either create smooth transitions for colleges to have the same level of detail as in the rest of your artwork. When you're concentrating on some small details, it is important to work both closely with the area to have more precise control, but also zoom out a little bit from time-to-time to see how the changes you have made to this area. Because the rest of your artwork. Looking at the overall artwork, I want to make a few final color changes to certain areas. You'll have more consistent color and then also fix any graphic issues which I might have missed so far. And now it is looking pretty much done. So finalize the coloring and shapes in your mesh, work within the format of your art board. And next, we can move on to the next stage of 18 more graphic elements to further develop this artwork. 11. Adding Geometric Elements: Your artwork might already look great just as a distorted mesh. And you can keep it as simple as that if you wish. But in my work, I like using the solid color geometric elements or topography, which makes the work more playful and exciting way creating contrast with the organic shapes in the meshes. So in these next few lessons, I will share my process of creating and working additional graphic elements into the gradient meshes. And you can use the following tips and techniques to add a solid color elements to your work if desired. In this artwork, I want to use some very simple geometric shapes to add a little bit of layering and depth to it, just to make it a little bit more fun. So first of all, I'm going to lock my mesh to stop it getting moved by mistake. And then I will switch to the Ellipse tool and draw a circle filled with white color. I love using circles in my work generally. But you can try using any other shapes you like. This looks like a good size to begin with. So I'm going to create a few copies of this circle. To keep my work simpler. I like using elements in exactly the same size. And since I'm integrating a layering effect and it in depth to my work by partially mosque in solid color elements behind the edges of the shapes in my mesh. I usually spend quite a bit of time moving them around the art board and finding some interests in areas where there are some sort of shape, inches and place my elements circles in this particular case nicely in relation to these shapes in the mesh. After eight and my circles, I want to quickly try and making them all a little smaller. So I will select all of them. Here we go and play around with their size in the transform panel. You can see how they look. So this is a tiny change, but I like it more. And now I can go and tweak their placement a little bit more, playing around with their position in relation to the shapes in the mesh. Yet again. Next, add a little bit more contrast to this work. I am going to switch to the line segment tool and add a few strokes. Before I create any more strokes, I'm going to play around with the stroke weight. You can see what works best with this composition. I don't want something too thin, which won't be really visible, then it might look facet. And I don't want solvent to fix, which will look like a rectangle. So this looks quite good. So I can create a couple more copies of this stroke going to play around with their arrangement. At the moment, my objects are in NOI and listening to each other when I move them. So I'm going to quickly turn off smart guides so I can move them around freely. And then carry on working on the placement of my strokes and circles until I get the composition. I like. When developing the composition of the additional graphic elements. Sometimes I delete some of the elements in the process. If it looks like it is too much, and then create more copies if I need to add more. And in this case, I have deleted a few along the way and then recreated a few extra copies to arrange them along the edges of the artwork to make it more interesting. I can be here all day moving this objects around, but this is good enough. So create and arrange any desired additional elements on top of your gradient mesh. And in the next lesson, I will share with you my process and tricks I use when integrating these sort of elements in the meshes using masks to add more depth to my work. 12. Masking Geometric Elements: Placing additional elements on top of gradient meshes can sometimes work without any extra steps. But I like working my geometric elements into the composition using masks to add some volume to my work. And in this lesson, I will walk you through my process of using clipping and opacity masks to organically integrate any additional graphic elements with a distorted meshes. To begin with, I'm going to select all these elements. Then set the blending mode to overlay so I can see what shapes are underneath them. And even though this looks quite cool, I still want to mask them behind certain shapes in my mesh. As you cannot extract the paths or shapes from the mesh. To create clipping paths. I use the pen tool and trace edges of the shapes in my mesh, create polls, puffs, and then apply them as clipping masks like this. So now this shape appears as if it is in front of this stroke. Next, I will repeat the same process here. Because I want my stroke to look solid. Hey, to change its blending mode back to normal. And also I need to go back to the first stroke. I have mosque in change its blending mode to normal as well. Now onto the next stroke here. I wanted to appear from behind this shape. But because I cannot see its edge when the strokes blending mode is set to overlay, I'm going to turn down its opacity instead. And then using the pen tool, draw a slightly curved segment like this pole on the edge of the shape. And then carry on as usual, by creating a cost above. Select both the stroke and the puff. Change the blending mode back to normal. Create a clipping mask, and change the strokes Opacity back to 100%. Then I'm going to repeat the same process with the remaining strokes. And the hardest thing here is creating the paths which follow the edges of the shapes precisely. So you might need to play around with the points and handles to create the exact curves. So there is a little bit more depth already. Now, we can move on to circles. But with the circles, it is not as easy because of the complexity of the shapes in the mesh. So instead, I'm going to use an opacity mask, work with the original mesh and see how it could work. So first of all, I'm going to select all of the ellipses, change that blending mode back to normal and group them together. And also group all my clipping masks with the strokes and all them so they don't get in the way. Next, I'm going to create a copy of my mesh and put it above the group with circles. Then all the original mesh below. Now to use these copy of the mesh as an opacity mask, I need to select both the mesh and the group with the circles and hit them Make Mask button in the transparency panel. Sometimes applying a colorful gradient mesh is an opacity mask can work, alright? But to be able to work because the match as a mosque in a more straightforward way, it is best to convert the mesh used as a mask shades of gray. So I'm going to select the opacity muscle group. Then select the mask object, which is my mesh here. And having the mesh selected on the artboard. Opened the recolor artwork window. Again, let's open the Advanced Options. This extra step of opening the advanced options can get annoyed. So you can check this option here so that the advanced recolor artwork dialogue will open by default in the future. Now, let's select the group containing greyscale color swatches. It might look better already, dependent on how the recoloring is applied to your mesh. But I'm going to be swapping the colors around to change the look of the mask circles until I get an opacity distribution. In general, it looks quite nice. I'm going to apply changes. Next, I'm going to select my mesh used as a mask. Go and manually change some of the colors of the color stops to make some areas more transparent by changing the color stops to black or darker shades of gray, and making other areas more epic. He's in some lighter gray color swatches. So this is the main logic of working with the opacity masks. And that's what I'm going to be doing. Going through different areas which are next to my circles and changing adjacent colors stops to different grayscale color swatches. Do I get the look I like? And in some cases, it might not be super straightforward. What affects what it is all about playing around to create the desired effect. So this area is quite tricky. So I might need to mask it a different way. But I will get back to it a little bit later. First, I will finish all the other areas near my remaining circles which need to be masked. So most of the circles are masked nicely. Now I'm going to deal with this one. First of all, I'm going to go and find it in the group and then take it out of the group so I can work with it separately. Then I'll turn down is a positive so I can see the shapes underneath hip. Now I need to move just a little. So the circle is placed over the hard edges of the shapes in my mesh. Next, I will carefully trace this edge using the pen tool. Create a closed path. Increase the opacity back to 100%. Select both shapes and create a clipping mask. And now the circle is properly masked. And these sorts of overhanging effect is exactly what I was after. And here's another tricky area where I need to develop how this circle works because the mesh, because it doesn't cover any hard edges. I need to mask it in a more complex way, both keeping it within the main opacity mask. So first, I will create a copy of the circle and paste it in front of their original one. Then filled with the black to white linear gradient with two opaque color stops for now. Then using the gradient tool, set it up. So it's somewhat goes in the same direction as this shape. And adjust the gradient just a little. Then select both circles and create an opacity mask out of the top one filled with a gradient. So now it looks a little bit better. Next, I'll go back to the circle. Select the mask object, and adjust the gradient a little bit more just to make this circle, then beta was the edges of this shape. Now it is looking much better. Next, let's select this opacity mask group and quickly check out different blending modes to see how I can better blend this record is the colors in the mesh. Enlightened here. Looks alright. Next, let's see if I can move this circle in a slightly different position. This could work, but I prefer how it was before. So I'm going to undo the previous few steps and go and play a little bit more with this gradient forming the opacity mask and change the colors and the opacity of the color stops. And in this case, why transparent color stop instead of the black one, works quite well and creates a slightly different transition. Now, I'm going to make a few final adjustments to the gradient slider here. This circle filled batter into this shape in the mesh. Then I'm going to go and play around with the blending mode of the circle. Once again, because I removed the previous blending mode. In this case, screen seems to be working quite well. Next, I'm going to adjust the colors in the gradient mesh used as an opacity mask to see whether this edge in the mesh can fade out a little nicer. This looks better. Now let's switch to the Trim View to see our progress. So far. The artwork looks almost finished. Requests just a few final adjustments, which I will address in the next lesson. So experiment with using clipping and opacity masks to work additional graphic elements into your mesh to create the desired effect. Then, let's move on to finalizing the look of the artwork. 13. Finalising Artwork: After working as the colors in the mesh and add an extra graphic elements, have a look at the art for coral and see if there are any areas which you would want to either stand out a little bit more or better blend with the surrounding areas. E.g. I. Think that the areas here and here could do is a little bit of color development to make them a little more exciting. For this sort of color modifications, I like using additional gradient elements. So I will create an ellipse and fill it with a white to white radial gradient, which fades out like this. Set its blending mode to orally and then play around with its size, position, and gradients. Let the settings to create a highlight in the desired area. This allows me a more precise control over coloring in certain areas of the gradient mesh. And obviously, it is also not destructive to the gradient mesh itself. And it is easier than tweaking the color stops in the mesh. Especially if you're working with a gradient mesh, which is quite complex and has a lot of points. And you can use this technique of using fading out gradients in different colors to highlight. Shading will alter the colors in certain areas in your work. So I'm quite happy with how it looks and highlights this area in the mesh. But I'm going to quickly go and check out other blending modes to see the alternative effects. Overlay works best in this case, because it adds more contrast here. It makes this shape stand out more. Using a fade in our gradient here gives me an idea for what I can try with this circle here. So I'm going to fill my previously solid color mask the white circle with a fading out white to white linear gradient. And keep it within the opacity mask as it was before. This looks so much better this way. Now I'm going to quickly copy this highlighted gradient to this area. Can play around with the size and position of this gradient and the blending modes and the gradient slider settings and see what can allow me to create the desired look. Not sure that this is what I need here. So I'm going to delete this ellipse and instead go and make a few minor adjustments to the colors in the actual mesh. Just to make it a little bit more interesting and a little darker instead. Now, this is almost finished, but I want to really quickly finalize the position of some of the circles and just move them around a little bit more. Next, let's switch to the Trim View. So this is how it is looking and the artwork itself is now finished. So make any required final adjustments to make your artwork look more considered. And the next step is to add a little bit of green to it to give it a more finished look and to make it look better when it is printed. 14. Adding Grain & Colour Enhancement: When creating my gradient designs, I usually texture them using green to make the color transitions look smoother, both on screen and in print. And to give my work a more finished look. To texture this entire artwork, I'm going to switch to the rectangle tool. Draw a rectangle in the same size as my art board. Make sure this is perfectly aligned to it. Then set its fill color to some darkish gray color, e.g. using these colors swatch. Hey, in this rectangle selected, go to the Effect menu, then texture, and select grain. In the Grain settings. I will set the grain type to stippled intensity to them and contrast. So 50 is it creates a nice even grain. And click, Okay. After the grain effect is applied, I'm going to set the blending mode of this rectangle to soft light. Then go and adjust its opacity. I usually set the opacity of migraine object to 35-50% dependent on the design and how much green I want to create. In this case, 25 per cent, work quite well. I'm going to create some nice, subtle grain. Usually grain also helps to increase contrast in the work. But here I feel that the colors can be a little bit more intense. So too quickly and non-destructively intensify the colors. I'm going to create a copy of my gradient mesh. Select the Copy, set its blending mode to Multiply, which should work with these range of colors. So it looks more contrasty and more intense, straightaway. But that's a little bit too much for my liking. So I'm going to turn down the opacity of this mesh to about 50%. This looks much more exciting in comparison to how it was before. So keep this in mind and try using a different blending mode and opacity settings to non-destructively and just the colors in your mesh. So at grain to texture your work and play around with intensifying or modifying the colors using a copy of your mesh and blend modes if required. And after that, let's move on to export in our work in the roster. So it can be showcased in line or printed. 15. Saving & Exporting Finished Artwork: Now that artwork is finished, we are ready to export it for print or digital use. Before expert in, I'm going to give me composition one final check. First, I'm going to lock the rectangle containing grain, so I don't move it by mistake. Then unlock and group all of the design elements together. In nudge them just a little bit within the art board. So their place better within the final format. So I'm happy with that. I'm going to click Save my Illustrator file. And now I'm ready to export it. Gradient artworks are best printed from roster files and not EPS for PDF documents. So let's go to the File menu and select Export, Export As. And here you can export your work in either for professional printing, JPEG or in some cases in PNG. I'm going to export my artwork in a jpeg format. Check Use Artboards. So I only export what's on the artboard. And select my art board here. And click Export. In the next dialog, set quality to maximum. I'm going to be experts in my work in RGB. Because angry to be printing and selling this art work via print on demand services which accept files in RGB. In my case, Society six. I'm going to set the compression method to baseline standard resolution to 300 ppi for print. Then select Art Optimized anti-aliasing to have nice smooth edges of the shapes in your work. And embed the color profile here. And then click Okay. Now if we will file to be exported, That's it. To produce smaller files for sharing on social media. Or in your Skillshare project. You can either export your artwork at 72 dpi separately or you can open your image, expert it as 300 DPI in Photoshop. Then scale it down to the desired size, which should be ideally kept to at least 1,200 pixels on the shorter side for both sharing on social media and for your Skillshare project. And this brings us to the end of the class. Let's wrap it up. 16. Final Thoughts & Conclusion: Gradient meshes in Adobe Illustrator and great for creating experimental designs and exciting abstract artworks, which you can use in digital or print projects. Print out to decorate an interior, will sell as print on demand products. And I cannot wait to see what you create in here, how you plan to use it. So be sure to post your project in the projects and resources tab for this class and share your final artwork along with the development stages and a few words about how you're going to use it. If you're going to share your work on Instagram, please tag us at Attitude Creative and use the attitude skills and abstract gradients with attitude hashtags. So we can easily find your post and share your work with our Instagram community. If you have any questions, please leave a comment in the discussions tab for this class. And I will happily answer and provide feedback. If you want to learn about all the different tools and techniques for creating gradients in Adobe Illustrator. Be sure to check out my class mastering Gradients in Adobe Illustrator. And if you are after some examples of how you can smartly combine different tools together to create different effects. Checkout my class designs dissected gradients that is in the graphic effects in Adobe Illustrator. And that's it for this class. I hope you have enjoyed it and learned something new. If you found this class helpful, please leave a review so more people could discover it. And be sure to follow up here on Skillshare to be the first to know about our new classes, updates and announcements. Also, don't hesitate to check out and follow our page on Facebook to see what we're up to. Get all the latest updates. Send us private messages. If you need to get in touch about something and not to miss if you're featured in our students spotlight gallery. Thank you for watching this class and I hope to see you in our other classes.