Hey there in this tutorial together, we're gonna make gradients because gradients are awesome. Let's go and do it now in illustrator. Alright, so working with gradients, we're going to open up our postcard dot ai file that's in our exercise files. You don't have to obviously we can work with any shape, this document, we're going to work with this black ground here and in our layers panel, we locked that layer. So I'm going to go to layers and I'm going to unlock it so that I can click on this kind of object in the background here, add a gradient. Let's go to properties and where it says fill, click on that and let's just get started with one of these. Like there's ugly white and black and then there's ugly orange to kind of weird other orange and then there's a sky blue to white. Okay, so you can start with one of these just to start with the black versus white to change the colors. The easiest way is probably just with the window gradient panel. Where are your gradient? There? You are...

? Okay. This panel here, if I move it up this, we can just double click these houses. Okay, so double click the white house and you can pick a new color from down here. Double click the black house. Well you can see what I did there. I double clicked not quite on the house. It generated a new swatch for me. Okay, if it does do that. Now I've got three swatches which is kind of cool. It means that I could pick another color and have a kind of a third transitional color. It's gonna be bad. It's actually not that bad. I like it. But anyway, if you do want to get rid of one of these, you just click on it and click the little trash can and that'll get rid of it, add it, just click back on the line underneath. All right, So we've got our gradients now, we want to adjust the kind of maybe direction, and we use this tool over here. Okay. Got the gradient tool, funnily enough. Okay, give it a click and you can see there's my gradient running right through the middle. What I can do is just click hold and drag anywhere on this rectangle. Okay, And change how I've got it. So, I'm using a linear gradient. We can go up to linear, change the radio and it kind of works differently. Right? We're kind of drawing from the center out. It's up to you how you want to do it. We can go way past where we need to be. Alright, so we're gonna go back to linear and a couple of things you can do watch this is if I hover above this line, I can actually use these houses. Okay, I can double click them here. It's just an alternative for clicking them up here. Doesn't work on all compound shapes and lots of other things. So I find just using the gradient tool is better when you're new. Um So yeah, we've got our gradients now let's say I you know, I did this course, I taught this course, I've been teaching the illustrator for a long time, and gradients was something like for the last 10 years we've been laughing at like ha ha, gradients, gradients are so back and a cool little site that I found the other day, is this one here? It's called gradient. Okay. And all it is is just nice gradients. Okay, having a look through, there's a few different options and what's really nice about it is say that you like one of these, you just click on the start color. Okay, copy this number here. It's called the hexi decimal number. And click copy. Um and jump into illustrator. And what I can do is I can click on this house and down here I can replace it. Their return, jump back in, grab this one, grab it properly copy, pasted, grab you, paste it down here. You can kind of just borrow gradients from people now, I'm going to drag it, you can see my, the reason what's happening with this box here, I'm going to close this down, is that I've got mine underneath. Okay, you might not like that, but let's say I want to start my gradient from about here onwards. Okay. There we go. Look at that, I love it. Anyway, so let's look at a couple of other things that you might run into trouble with because the rectangles pretty easy. Let's look at something like this. Um So this here is an outline bit of text. Okay, so its not editable text, we've outlined it. Okay, so it's just kind of shapes. The problem with it is when I add it and I go to here and you'll notice it kind of does it individually where I want to kind of gradient that goes across all of them. The way to get around that is if you grab your gradient tool and just drag across them all, okay, you've got to actually grab your gradient tool and drag across them all and we'll kind of join them all up now we need to open up the gradient panel again because remember that line that appeared that we can work on the graphic down here, It just doesn't work with compound shapes. So we're gonna go here and we're going to go to gradient if you're not sure what the compound shape is, don't worry, we're gonna cover that later in the course as well on radio, it's pretty cool. But I'm gonna drag across the mall and we get this kind of like yeah consistent across all three of them and I'm going to pick a color, you can move on now. I am totally just going to go off and find a cool color and um yeah added to it, you can skip on to the next video, I love this, look at it. Who'd have thought I'd love this If you'd asked me a couple of years ago Dan, you're going to be into gradients and they're going to be kind of like, I don't know, 80s, retro pastels, I'll be like no way. Here we are. Okay, this one's got three colors in it. I'm going to grab some, clicking on the line there, click And then the last one is this green. If you're finding your colors aren't just matching the same as mine, I take it back. I'm not sure, I'm not sure I'm into this color as much as I thought it was. Um but let's say that you don't the colors just aren't coming out rich, they're looking really nice in here but they're washed out in your illustrator file and it's because you're probably working in C. N Y. Que we covered this a little earlier. But what you might want to do is before you change the colors. Okay. You might go to file or pick your colors, go to file, document color setup and make sure you're an RGb, change the RGB, then go into your colors. It's kind of like a one way street, you can't just flick it over to RGB and hope they come back to life. You need to put them back in now. Alright, that is gradients in illustrator, which I now love. Which probably in a year or two, nobody will love again, gradients there. So in fashion and then out of fashion, Alright, let's get into the next video.

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Daniel Walter Scott

Multi-award winning, influential media designer & Adobe Certified Instructor with 15+ yrs of experience.

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topics covered in this class

Graphic Design Illustration Adobe Illustrator Drawing

Ratings and Reviews

Roz Fruchtman

BIG COMPLAINT... I'm just starting this course. I have Illustrator CS6. My BIG/HUGE Complaint and I only watched 2 1/2 brief lessons... Is that the FiVRR LOGO (top right) is RIGHT ON TOP of the Illustrator Panels and YOU CANNOT SEE what is under it. IF one is just learning, they need to see what everything looks like in Illustrator (or any class). I STRONGLY suggest that FIVRR and CreativeLive find a better place to put the FIVRR Logo instead of putting it where it BLOCKS ESSENTIAL course visuals! Not sure I can get through this, but I'm not giving up quite yet. I like the course previews and IF I can learn how to get around Illustrator I will be thrilled... I am a Photoshop person, and Illustrator makes me feel like an incompetent! ;) Perhaps IF I can learn Illustrator I can use it for some of the visuals I create! Thanks in advance. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE find a better place and size for the Fivrr Logo. ~Roz Fruchtman aka @RozSpirations

Annie Kerr

This was a great class that covered the fundamentals really well - some of the instructions were out of date if you are using Creative Cloud but wasn't anything I couldn't get around. I loved the format and Daniel is a great teacher, who made each video interesting and fun to watch!

Christi Peace

This class is AMAZING!! Daniel is a very thorough, entertaining and easy to follow instructor. You DO NOT need to take any college course on Illustrator because this is the whole thing right here!! You will be a pro once you complete it. I only wish that Creative Live could send me a diploma for it once I complete it! BUY THIS CLASS! IT’S WORTH EVERY PENNY!!

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How to Make Gradients in Adobe Illustrator CC

How to Make Gradients in Adobe Illustrator CC

Lesson Info

20. How to Make Gradients in Adobe Illustrator CC

Lessons

Class Introduction to Adobe Illustrator CC for Beginners

Class Exercise Files for Adobe Illustrator CC Essentials

Getting Started with Adobe Illustrator CC

How to Draw in Adobe Illustrator CC with Shapes & Lines

How to Draw Using the Shape Builder Tool in Adobe Illustrator CC

How to Draw a Fox Using the Shape Builder Tool in Adobe Illustrator

Drawing - Quiz

How to Draw Custom Logo Shapes Easily in Adobe Illustrator CC

How to Draw Anything Using the Curvature Tool in Adobe Illustrator

How to Draw Using the Pen Tool in Adobe Illustrator CC

Drawing with the Pencil Tool in Adobe Illustrator CC

How to Use Brushes in Adobe Illustrator CC

How to Draw Lines with the Width Tool in Adobe Illustrator

How to Use Type & Fonts in Adobe Illustrator to Design a Postcard

How to Curve Type Around a Badge Using Adobe Illustrator CC

How to Break Apart & Destroy Text & Fonts Using Adobe Illustrator CC

What is RGB & CMYK Colors in Adobe Illustrator CC

How to Steal Colors from an Image Using Eye Dropper in Illustrator

How to Find Amazing Colors in Illustrator Using Color Theme