This lesson was an introduction to the mesh tool in Illustrator, which I opened up a poster-sized canvas to begin. I started by creating a basic shape, which was at first a circle and became a balloon, by clicking the direct selection tool, clicking on anchor at the bottom left and dragging down.

 

 

 

With the shape selected, I went to object, create gradient mesh – four rows and four columns to start out. It was recommended to click preview to see the mesh before selecting okay, and since it looked quite good, I went ahead to make the shadings and shines. The mesh had little points at every intersection where a column and row would meet. These were the anchor points, and they could be selected using the direct selection tool. So, using that, I went to the top-left anchor point, held shift and clicked the following two underneath, so that multiple were selected. I then double-clicked fill and chose a lighter shade to add to the sections around those points, which added some depth and started to make the shape look more 3d. I did the same thing with the top-right anchor point, but this time made the fill white so that there was light on both sides of the balloon. Finally, with the two bottom right points, I went darker instead of lighter, to create some shadows to balance out the highlights. The resulting shape looks very realistic in being in a 3d space!

 

 

 

From that point onwards, it was mainly experimentation. I tried the same technique to make a shiny ball and then used other circular shapes, playing around with the number of nodes and which areas to turn darker and lighter. I even tried to create a bauble by using a reference image, but I found it quite difficult to replicate the shadows and highlights because of the way that they curved, so I attempted to work with the colours a bit more by trying some in-between shades and although it still wasn’t quite like the image, there was definitely some improvement.

 

 

 

 

 

Then, it was time to move onto some more challenging shapes. First, I found an image of a particularly shiny apple to use as a template. After importing it into Illustrator, I quickly traced the outline of the basic shape and then moved the template to the side. Then, I went to mesh tool (u), cursor changes, and along the edge, clicked to add mesh lines, which automatically followed the shape of the apple, but if not to my satisfaction, could be perfected with the bezier handles. Once the mesh was in place, using the direct selection tool and eyedropper tool, I picked out the colours from the apple and added them to the same areas they were in in the reference image. In theory, this seemed simple enough, but there were no mesh lines on the reference, and they could have been wrong on the shape, so adding the colours in was more difficult than expected. I had to go back and delete or add certain anchor points and try to get the highlight/shadow/mid-tone to have a similar shape as the apple from the image. I am pleased with the result and I think I managed to get it to look like an apple, even though it isn’t exactly like the reference. I like that it looks realistic though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The final attempt I made with the mesh tool for the lesson was a pumpkin. This was the hardest one by far because the mesh kept going all over the place and I couldn’t fix it with the bezier handles. I could try getting the curve exactly, but I couldn’t actually move the top and bottom of the line, so it ended up looking very strange towards the top and bottom. In fact, I spent so long on the mesh, I didn’t even manage to add a lot of colours, just some highlights. I wasn’t happy with how the pumpkin turned out, especially after how good my apple looked. I think if I had gotten further, creating the texture would have been the next hardest thing.