From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

817 Combining object blends with a pattern

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

Start my 1-month free trial

817 Combining object blends with a pattern

“

when you combine object blends with patterns inside Illustrator. And along the way we'll take these line textures that we created in the previous movie and we'll turn them into this seamlessly repeating tile pattern that you see in the background. We'll also adjust the color and we'll add a gradient if only for the sake of variety. and then turn off the pattern layer for the time being. So that you can see how everything fits inside of a hexagon. And also notice that the hexagon is flat at the top and at the bottom. And that'll become important when we're choosing a shape for our pattern. Now go ahead and click on the guides layer in order to make it active and then select the Type Tool. And you may recall when we first created this object last week that I measured it by drawing a hexagon and we came up with the width of 600 points, I can remember that, and a height of 519.62 points. Go ahead and select that value and press Control + C or Command + C on a Mac in order to copy it to the clipboard and then press the Escape key in order to switch back to the black arrow tool. And now I'm going to turn off the guides layer, because I'm done with it, and I'll turn on the drawing layer, and I'll go ahead and press Control + A or Command + A on the Mac to select everything that's currently visible, and then I'll go up to the Object menu, choose Pattern, and then choose Make in order to enter the pattern editing mode. Now you may get this alert message that's just telling you that Illustrator has automatically added a swatch to the Swatches panel. You can go ahead and click OK. And I'm going to name this pattern Grouped lines. And the reason I'm calling it Grouped lines is because we no longer have any blends. Notice if I click on one of these lines over here nothing whatsoever is happening. I'm not sure why that is, so I'll go ahead and click on this edge and that goes ahead and selects all of those lines, which have been converted from a blend to a group, as we can see over here on the far left side of the control panel. And that's because Illustrator's patterns do not support blends, they don't support embedded patterns and a bunch of other things either. So that's just something to keep an eye out for. All right, now we know the shape of this tile needs to be Hex by Column, because that's the hexagon that has a flat top and a flat bottom. And now I'm going to change the Width, Illustrator almost has it right, but I think it's trying to compensate for the strokes, so I'm going to change that value to exactly 600 points. And then I'll Tab to the Height value and press Control + V or Command + V on a Mac in order to paste that value I just copied of 519.62 points. All right, now we need to fill in these holes right here and we're going to do that using this cube, actually a rotated version of it, and the easiest way to select that cube is to go up to the View menu and choose Outline. Notice that it has a keyboard shortcut of Control + Y or Command + Y on a Mac. That is an age-old shortcut in Illustrator that allows you to switch back and forth between the Outline and Preview modes. So I'll go ahead and choose that command to switch to the Outline mode and then I'll just partially marquee, or at least attempt to, I just failed to make it work. I'll go ahead and undo that change. And armed with my black arrow tool, which, as you can see, is selected up here at the top of the toolbox, I'll marquee downward, like so, so that I select just those central objects. At least, that was the plan, but I went and selected this big cross up here at the top. I'll press Control + Y or Command + Y on a Mac to switch back to the Preview mode. And then I'll Shift + click on the yellow cross to deselect it. All right, you might find it helpful to go ahead and group these shapes together, if only so you can better keep track of them, by going to the Object menu and choose the Group command. They represent the top of the orthogonal objects, whereas the dark blue shapes represent the right hand side, and the purple shapes represent the bottom side. At which point just go ahead and click OK in order to accept that change. Now press the V key to switch back to your black arrow tool and drag from this bottom right anchor point let's say until you snap into alignment with this location here. And then notice that I'm seeing a white arrowhead, that's the snap cursor, as soon as I press and hold the Alt or Option key I'm seeing a double arrowhead cursor, which tells me that I'm going to duplicate those shapes, like so. And now I'm done. So all I have to do is either click the Done button or you can just press the Escape key and that will create a new swatch here in the Swatches panel. All right, now I'm going to bring back the pattern layer and then I'll click over here on the far right hand side in order to select that big rectangle that's filled with the pattern. And the reason I have to be sure to click over here on the right hand side or the far left hand side is you want to avoid the glow that's assigned to the drawing layer. Then go ahead and click on that first swatch on the far left side of the control panel and change that fill from Gobstoppers to Grouped lines in order to create this effect here. All right, now I want to colorize the pattern red, and so I'm going to start off by targeting the layer by clicking in its circular meatball right there and then I'll go up to the Window menu and choose the Appearance command to switch over to the Appearance panel, at which point you can see that I've already added a fill to this particular layer. I'm going to go ahead and change the color of that fill by clicking this down pointing arrowhead right here and I'm going to select this shade of red that begins with R equals 193. And then I'm going to click on this final Opacity value that reads 66%, I just want it to be 100% opaque, so with that Opacity value selected I'll click on the little trash icon in the bottom right corner of the Appearance panel and that will change the Opacity to its default setting, which happens to be 100% Normal. All right, I'll go ahead and Escape out of that. Now I want to add a kind of gradient to this layer, so I'll go ahead and click on the existing fill, then I'll drop down to the tiny page icon at the bottom of the Appearance panel and I'll click on it in order to duplicate that fill. And I'm going to switch it out for a gradient by selecting this predefined gradient in the Swatches panel, which reads White, Black. So I'll go ahead and select that guy. Now I don't really want the blend mode to be Color, because that's just going to end up making the pattern look grayscale, so I'll click on the word Opacity and I'll change its blend mode for now to Multiply, so that we're darkening up the background. All right, now we need to switch to a radial gradient and the easiest way to do that is to go up to the Window menu and choose the Gradient command in order to switch over to the Gradient panel. Make sure that you can see the entire panel, so if it's collapsed, like so, then you need to click that double arrow icon a couple of times. Then switch the Type to Radial Gradient. Then switch the Type to Radial Gradient. In the most recent version of Illustrator that's an icon. In the most recent version of Illustrator that's an icon. In previous versions you'll have to work with a pop-up menu. In previous versions you'll have to work with a pop-up menu. And then I'll go ahead and drag this white slider And then I'll go ahead and drag this white slider over to a location of 50% is what I'm looking for. over to a location of 50% is what I'm looking for. And then I'll go ahead And then I'll go ahead and click on this black color stop right here and click on this black color stop right here and I want to replace it with that same shade of red and I want to replace it with that same shade of red that we used before, that we used before, the one that begins R equals 193. the one that begins R equals 193. Go ahead and grab that guy and drag it and drop it Go ahead and grab that guy and drag it and drop it onto that black color stop, like so. onto that black color stop, like so. And finally, I'll click on the word Opacity And finally, I'll click on the word Opacity that's associated with this gradient, that's associated with this gradient, so the gradient will have to be twirled open, like so, so the gradient will have to be twirled open, like so, and click on the word Opacity and switch the blend mode and click on the word Opacity and switch the blend mode from Multiply to Hard Light from Multiply to Hard Light in order to produce this effect here. in order to produce this effect here. And finally, I'll press Control + Shift + A And finally, I'll press Control + Shift + A or Command + Shift + A on a Mac to deselect my artwork or Command + Shift + A on a Mac to deselect my artwork and then here inside the most recent version of Illustrator and then here inside the most recent version of Illustrator I'll go up to the View menu and choose Presentation Mode I'll go up to the View menu and choose Presentation Mode in order to hide the interface, in order to hide the interface, so we can focus exclusively on our dramatic artwork. so we can focus exclusively on our dramatic artwork. And I might go ahead and zoom in as well. And I might go ahead and zoom in as well. And that is how you combine object blends And that is how you combine object blends along with a seamlessly repeating tile pattern along with a seamlessly repeating tile pattern here inside Adobe Illustrator. here inside Adobe Illustrator.

Contents