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

810 Creating a gradient pattern in Illustrator

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

810 Creating a gradient pattern in Illustrator

over the course of a shape like this right here? And then I thought, wait, you can totally do that. Here, let me show you exactly. So simple how it works. And I'll go up to the Window menu and choose the Appearance command to bring up the Appearance panel over here. And then notice right now we have no selection. I'll go ahead and click on this big rectangle, and I can now see that I've selected a path and that it has that pattern fill. Go ahead and click on the fill to select it, and then click on a little page icon at the bottom of the panel in order to duplicate it. Now, obviously we don't need two identical pattern fills, so we're going to change this guy to a gradient. By going up to the Window menu and choosing the Gradient command, which is going to bring up the Gradient panel. which is going to bring up the Gradient panel. Now, depending on which version Now, depending on which version of the software you're using, of the software you're using, you may have to click on this little double arrow icon you may have to click on this little double arrow icon a few times in order to expand the panel. a few times in order to expand the panel. And now, let's say what I want to do And now, let's say what I want to do is I just want to fade this pattern to white. In that case I would go ahead and click on the gradient slider right there in order to change this fill to a gradient. So as you can see the previous fill, the one below it, is still a pattern. And then I'll grab white from my swatches panel, and I'll drag it and drop it onto that final color point so that both of these colors are white. Then I'll change the angle value to 90 degrees. And I'll select this final color stop, and I'll change its opacity to 0%. Now, presumably you'd want the fade to go a little more quickly than this, so I'm going to set the location of this guy, let's say to 60% so that we can mostly see the pattern fill. And then I'll select this final point here which is covering it up, down here at the bottom. And I'm going to change its location, let's say to 20%. And we end up with a pattern that fades to white. Alright, but what I really want to do is fade my pattern between different colors. So I'll go ahead and switch back to that guy. Now, another option of course, is you just fade to a single color. And so I'll grab yellow, and I'll drag in and drop it onto this color stop right there. And I'll drag and drop this guy onto the second color stop. And then down here in the Appearance panel, I'll click on a word opacity that's associated with this fill, so you'll have to have that fill twirled open like so. And then I'll click on opacity to bring up the Transparency panel here. And I'll click on a blend mode. And I could change it to something like multiply if I wanted to burn that yellow in like so. And by the way, blend modes always work best when you're working in the RGB mode. I just want to pass that along. I just want to pass that along. Or you could choose screen Or you could choose screen in order to use yellow to brighten things up. That's going to look pretty weird however. That's going to look pretty weird however. You could just go with color You could just go with color if you want to colorize the pattern. if you want to colorize the pattern. Or if you just wanted to impart the hue by itself and let the various saturation values from the original pattern show through, then you can try hue instead. Alright but here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go ahead and switch this guy back to color, and then I'll go back over to the Gradient panel here, and I'll drag the second color stop all the way to a location value of 100%. And I'll drag the first one back to 0%. And I'll grab this shade of blue that begins R=46. And I'll drag it and drop it onto that first color stop like so. And then I'll select the last color stop. And I'll increase its opacity value to 100%. And that's it. That's how you create a gradient pattern in any copy of Illustrator you could possibly possess. Okay, so I showed you how you can use a gradient to fade a pattern to white like this. to fade a pattern to white like this. This is a radial gradient, but same diff. This is a radial gradient, but same diff. But let's say you want to fade one pattern But let's say you want to fade one pattern into a totally different pattern, into a totally different pattern, which is a very different diff. Fortunately if you're a member of LinkedIn Learning, I have a follow-up movie in which I show you exactly how to make this work. Deke's Techniques each and every week. Keep watching.

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