Adobe Illustrator: Fading Out Shadows

Here’s a quick tutorial where I run through using the opacity mask in Illustrator to create transparent shadows that fade out to nothing. I can remember when I first started drawing in Illustrator it took longer than I care to admit before I realized that a gradient didn’t have to have two colors (ok, it does but it doesn’t have to appear that way).

Quick Color Matching in Illustrator

Here’s a really quick way to match a color to an external source (like a paint chip). I used to have to do this a lot when I was doing architectural renderings that were then printed to a large-format Epson 9600.

Draw Fluffy Clouds in Adobe Illustrator

Quick Highlights in Illustrator

Here’s a quick tutorial using the Dunks that I gave away in an earlier post. It shows how to create complex highlights using the pathfinder tool. If you wanted to, sharp shadows can be done the same way.