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 Recreating objects and effects in Illustrator to really develop your skills!One of the fastest ways I know of to learn new tricks and techniques in Illustrator is to just find an image and GO FOR IT!!! When I received the query of how to recreate the object above I didn't look in the "How To Draw Tubes With Light and Shadows" section of the manual... There isn't one! I just dove in and set up an example. Of course, this gets easier with time, but you will only benefit from exposing yourself to new challenges! Try anything and everything to get what you want. You can always UNDO what you did and start over. You can do it!!! Here’s what I did to achieve the effect in the example above... Draw out the basic shapes. (You can rotate it later if you need to.) Rectangle and two ovals using the RECTANGLE TOOL
Select the oval on the left and the rectangle and then go to the PATHFINDER TOOL and in the SHAPE MODES, select ADD TO SHAPE AREA. (Top row, far left.) Don’t expand it!! The left oval and the rectangle will merge into one shape and look like this:
Select the new shape you just made and create a three color GRADIENT. I have dark green on both ends and a lighter green in the middle set at a location of 50 and an angle of 90.
Fill the remaining oval with the same colored GRADIENT. I used angle=90 and location=60 to offset it a little.
Next, I adjust the GRADIENT a little to give it a little more contrast by making the dark green on each end a little darker.
For a final touch, select the LAYER you are working on in the LAYERS PALETTE and drag it to the CREATE NEW LAYER
And there you have it! |
and the ELIPSE TOOL 
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icon in the bottom of the palette. This will give us a copy of the layer.
and select the right oval and the rectangle in the new layer and delete them. You should now have only the left oval on this layer. Select the oval and in the TRANSPARENCY PALETTE, set the MODE to SCREEN and the OPACITY to about 15-20%. This will give you a slight color variation for the other end of the cylinder. Keep it subtle!
