The three gradient stroke options

In this movie, I'll show you how to assign gradients to strokes. In fact, I'll show you a couple of applications. We'll create this neon stroke around the cats face, and then we'll assign a radial gradient to its whiskers. I'll go ahead and switch over to my artwork in progress and using the black arrow tool I'll click on the outline of the cats head. Now I'll increase the line weight up here in the control panel to 12 points, let's say. If only for the sake of demonstration. Then, in the appearance panel, you want to make sure the stroke is selected, then move to the gradient panel, and click in the gradient bar in order to apply that gradient.

And you can see that we've assigned a white to black gradient inside the stroke. Now we have the usual options here inside the gradient panel. That is to say you can change the angle of the gradient and you can also adjust your color stops. But you cannot use the gradient tool. So notice that if I press the 'g' key to switch to the gradient tool here inside the tool box, I will get this little ghostbuster's icon that showing me that I can't use this tool with gradient strokes. So you have to make all of your adjustments inside the gradient panel.

I'll go ahead and press the V key to switch back to the black arrow tool. That said, we do have some unique gradient options associated with strokes. So notice this stroke item right here that has 3 icons following it. The first icon which is selected by default applies the gradient within the stroke, which is to say the illustrator goes ahead and treats the stroke as a kind of filled path outline. And in our case we're seeing white over here on the left hand side as by default, and black on the right hand side.

But you can also make the gradient wrap around the length of the stroke by selecting the second icon in. Which applies a gradient along the stroke. But in my case if I click on this icon, then I end up losing the stroke, as you can see here. And if that happens to you, well, we've happily discovered a bug. And as a combination of this 12 point line weight working along with the cap option. So notice if I click inside this line weight value here inside the Appearance panel, or up here in the Control panel.

And I press the up arrow key in order to raise the line weight to 13 points. I regain my stroke. If I press the down arrow key to take it down to twelve point, it disappears. And then if I press down arrow again, then take it down to 11 points, it reappears. But not well. If I go ahead and zoom in on the stroke, notice that I have these kind of lumpy elbows coming off the corner points. And that's a function of my round joint. To get rid of the round joint, click on the word stroke, in order to bring up the stroke panel, and then change the corner option to miter joint.

And you'll see those elbows disappear, and now I can click inside the weight value and take it up to 12 points, and my stroke survives. Alright, I'm going to go ahead and zoom back out so that we can see that we have another issue. Notice that the stroke begins y, it goes all the way around the cats head. And ends black here at the chin. If you want to reconcile the gradient with a smooth transition then it needs to begin and end with the same colors. So I'm going to click on the first white color stop there, and I'm going to change the location value to 50%.

Press the tab key inorder to invoke that change. Then I'll double click in the black color stop. And I'll click on this Fly out menu icon and switch to CMYK. So I can see that the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black sliders. And I'll change the c, m, and y values to fifty percent a piece. So that we end up with a rich black. And then I'll press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac, and drag this black color stop all the way to the left hand side in order to create a copy of it.

And I end up with this effect here. So in other words we're beginning the gradient at black. We're sweeping all around to the top of the head, which is white, and then, we're going back down to the chin, which, once again, ends at black. Your other option is to flow the gradient across the stroke. And to make clear what's going on there, I'm going to increase the line weight to 20 points. >> Just so we have a big, thick stroke. And then, I'll switch to this Third Stroke icon > Apply Gradient Across stroke in order to create this effect here.

And so you can notice now, we're going from black along the outside, to white in the middle, to black on the inside, so we end up with this very easy to apply neon effect. Now, a 20 point line weight is great for the sake of demonstration, but I don't really want it to be this thick. So, I'll take the line weight down to six points. >> Like so. All right. Now I'll go ahead and zoom in, and scroll down a little bit as well. And the final thing I want to do is fill the whiskers with a gradient. So, I'll click on the whiskers in order to select them.

And because we have a Dynamic ZigZag Effect applied, I'll press Ctrl+H or Cmd+H on the Mac. To hide those selection edges. And now, just as before, I'll make sure my stroke is selected inside the gradient panel. And then I'll click on the gradient bar in order to apply that black to white gradient effect. Illustrators has gone ahead and reset the stoke. So we're applying the gradient within the lines. However the problem is that we're seeing the gradient applied inside of each stroke independently, which is not the effect I want.

These whiskers are grouped together. What I really want to do is apply the gradient to the entire group. So the first step is to double click on the word contents inside the appearance panel, and then grab the stroke and drag it and drop it into the trash icon. And that turns the stroke to none. As you can see here inside the document window. Now I'll click on the word group in order to target it. And I'll drop down to the add new stroke icon, in the bottom left corner of the appearance panel, and I'll click on it. Now I'll take this new stroke, and I'll change its line weight to two points, and then, again notice that the stroke is selected here inside the gradient panel, now go ahead and click on the gradient bar.

Now, I'm not really looking for this style of gradient. Notice that it's linear, I want it to be radial. So it's emitting from white in the center to black in the outside. So I'll start things off by getting rid of this first black color stop by just dragging and dropping it downward. And now I'll change the type from linear to radial, and I end up with this effect which is very close to what I'm looking for but not quite. So I'll select the white color stop and I'll change its location to 35%. And then I'll select the black color stop,and I'll bring it in a little.

By changing its location to 88%. Now we get a little bit of blackness down here on these bottom whiskers. Finally, I'll select the midpoint skew by clicking on this little diamond. And I'll change its location to 70%. and I end up with this affect here. And that's it folks. That's our final gradient art, which features, among other things, multiple gradients assigned to single path outlines. We've got gradients that fade from opacity to transparency, we have a couple of lines of gradient text, and finally, two different styles of gradient strokes.

Here inside Illustrator.