The Ultimate Collection Of Tutorials For Mastering The Mesh Tool

• January 17th, 2011
• Illustrator

A wide collective of tutorials ranging from the basic fundamental tutorials for learning the mesh tool to more advanced technical tutorial to master the technical aspects of the mesh tool. The mesh tool is one of illustrators complex tools but when mastered you can create some great designs. Feel free to leave a comment to share your favourite tutorials featured in the post.

1. How to Create an Energy Saving Bulb in Illustrator

How to create an energy saving bulb with the help of the Illustrator’s Mesh Tool. At the beginning it could be quiet hard to work with, but if you get used to it, it’s fairly simple.

2. How to Create a Fancy Gift Bow using Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a realistic image of a gift bow using the Mesh Tool. With many uses including greeting cards, designs and even web banners, I’m sure you’ll find many uses for this fancy ribbon.

3. Quick Tip: How to Tame the Gradient Mesh

The Gradient Mesh can be one of the hardest tools to control. Even professional Illustrators can be heard crying out in frustration at its seemingly random actions. You can overcome these feelings of frustration by learning some techniques that will make your job easy and fun.

4. illustrator tutorial: create a yummy vector cupcake

An awesome design tutorial for creating an cup cake illustration design.

5. How to Make a Vector Military Cap Icon

This tutorial will show the intermediate-to-advanced Adobe Illustrator artist how to make a realistic military style cap icon using predominately gradients, blends, and the Gradient Mesh Tool. We’ll be using a photo reference to base this illustration on, though utilizing creative judgement throughout the process.

6. Vector Portrait

A great tutorial on how to use the mesh tool to create an vector portrait.

7. Tips for Working with the Gradient Mesh Tool In Illustrator

One of the most amazing and confounding tools in Adobe Illustrator is probably the Gradient Mesh tool. Working with this feature allows the user to divide almost any shape into a mesh. Each intersection of two lines (horizontal/vertical) can be colored with a solid color. This tutorial takes a different format than some of our other tuts, and will help you work with the Mesh tool better.

8. Illustrator Tutorial: Gradient Mesh Flower

Gradient Mesh can be a wonderful tool to master but the learning curve canbring a bit of frustration to the beginner, I myself found it confusing at first but with a little practice and a simple plan I was able to get around a few of the tools weaknesses and avoid snapping Wacom pens in anguish.

9. Make a Shiny Gum Ball Machine with Mesh Gradients

In this tutorial, it will explain how to create a gum ball machine with mesh gradient. We’ll create the base, the glass casing, the money slot, and the opening where the bubble gum balls come out. This is an advanced tutorial and the pace is fairly quick. Intermediate Illustrator knowledge is required.

10. Create Abstract Backgrounds

I like illustrating characters, icons, and other highly representative illustrations. I do this kind of work the majority of time in Illustrator,  so it’s nice to break out and create abstract backgrounds. Abstract backgrounds are easy to create in Illustrator with a couple of simple techniques. Using Gradient Meshes, Steps Blends and Opacity Masks you can quickly create an abstract background.

11. Illustrate a Pair of Sweet Gradient Mesh Cherries

In this tutorial, it will explain how to create a pair of cherries solely with the Gradient Mesh tool. If you’re not familiar with the Gradient Mesh tool, then this is a great tutorial to learn how to start using it. You can create artwork with a semi-realistic to very realistic look with that tool. It can take effort to master, but it’s worth your time.

12. Chinese Bamboo

Here is a quick tutorial to draw bamboo with the Illustrator Symbol Sprayer and Mesh Tool.

13. How to Illustrate a Professional Looking Apple iPad

In this tutorial you will learn how to make a realistic looking illustration of an Apple iPad using the Rounded Corner Rectangle, Gradient Mesh and Gradient Tool. Don’t let the professional finish fool you; this tutorial is perfect for beginners and experts alike.

14. How to make a detailed printer icon

In this icon design tutorial, you will construct a desktop printer icon that is rich in detail. Youwill use the industry-standard vector illustration tool: Adobe Illustrator.

15. How to Turn a Client Approved Snack Label into a 3D Looking Snack Pack

Often after approving the final label’s design, clients will want to see the design mocked-up as a package. Starting with a final label design, we’ll use Illustrators mesh tools to simulate a 3D package design. Let’s go ahead and do that!

16. How to Create a Radial Mesh in Illustrator and Make a Vector CD

Ever wonder about creating Radial Mesh in Illustrator? Yes, now you can and it will reveal more possibilities to you in Illustrator. In the first part of this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a Radial Mesh in Illustrator (without using any 3rd party plugin), and in second part we’ll create a Vector CD using that radial mesh method.

17. Gradient Mesh Tutorial

Ever wonder about creating Radial Mesh in Illustrator? Yes, now you can and it will reveal more possibilities to you in Illustrator. In the first part of this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a Radial Mesh in Illustrator (without using any 3rd party plugin), and in second part we’ll create a Vector CD using that radial mesh method.

18. How to Create Vector Clouds with the Gradient Mesh Tool

Create impressionistic, infinitely-scalable vector clouds with the Gradient Mesh tool. It’s easy to start, but it takes a lot of time to master. There are several ways of approaching the Gradient Mesh – this one may be new to you.

19. How to Make an Opulent Chair Icon

In this tutorial, you will learn how to make a chair icon using gradient mesh, the pathfinder tool and the appearance panel. Don’t let this tut deceive you, with a bit of imagination you can create an entire collection of soft furnishing icons in minutes with a few easy tricks.

20. Character superheroes illustration set

When you’re starting to work in digital media, some things are a little bit difficult to translate for the analogical style to the vectorial and bitmap fields. Usually doing things like smooth gradients, using the pen’s hardness to define volume and more manual techniques are difficult to adapt at first to the graphic interfaces of programs such as Illustrator and Photoshop. Today we are about to take a lesson like the ones you took when you were at design school, you’re going to learn how to create the basic character design for an illustration.