Day 17: Blending Shapes & Colors

By Tony Soh

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Illustrator Blend Tool does the trick of creating smooth transition between objects. You can blend open paths to create line effects and blend shapes to create realistic shadings. There are many creative things you can do with the Blend Tool and you will definitely be using it a lot in your illustrations.

Blend Effects

Here are some quick interesting stuff you can do with blending.

Realistic Shadings

With smooth blends you can create realistic shading which cannot be done with gradient.

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About The Author: Tony Soh

Hi. I'm the founder of Vector Diary. Illustrator is my passion and I have written numerous tutorials on illustrator helping people learn illustrator. My most popular tutorial on learn illustrator has been a hit. It makes learning illustrator so easy and has benefited more than 20,000 people worldwide. Also, I've revealed some of my secret techniques in the premium tutorials. So don't forget to check it out!

Read more by Tony Soh

• 13 Amazing Gradient Mesh Tutorials
• Day 3: Drawing Basic Shapes
• Illustrator Training Course
• Illustrator Blend Tool Experiments
• Day 5: Drawing with Pen Tool

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+Add Comment15 Comments

1. 
   ArtConch August 7th

   Loved this lesson, so many neat things illustator can do, thanks again for showing me how to blend

2. 
   LadyUranus August 19th

   I think I’ve done something wrong with my settings– when I used “blend–>make” the object goes from dark to white instead of what you’re example shows. The star example gave me three deformed stars in between my start and end points.

3. 
   iStockdiary August 19th

   Hi LadyUranus, make sure the 2 objects are same shape. Then blend using Blend>Make. Alt/Option click on the blend to change settings to see how you can edit the blend options.

4. 
   Leroy Simpson August 29th

   Cool tutorial, i make jamaica flag blend into a spliff

5. 
   Derek Maloy September 25th

   Keep the fill for both circles with the desired color. Change the stroke to None, box with red line through it, for both circles. Then try using the blend> make!

6. 
   elearning January 6th

   Nice tutorial. Thank you so much.

7. 
   erick February 11th

   Thanks for this. Very much appreciated.

8. 
   kiticha phoonsonbat March 20th

   Love and very funny this lesson.Thanks for good tips.You are cool.

9. 
   xavier izaguirre April 26th

   Derek is right. You have to remove strokes or its colours would eb the ones blending!!!!

   Awesome tutorial

10. 
    xavier izaguirre April 26th

    What I am not able to do though is to distribute objects keeping the size. The shapes in the middle are always smaller and bigger than the starting and end ones.

11. 
    Raymond Avilez May 11th

    Same here…how do you keep the size of the object consistent? Also having a little trouble with the line effects…how is it done?

12. 
    Dan Huffman January 21st

    ok, so, under Method 2: Using the blend tool, I follow directions, blend options window pops-up, I click 3 and OK, and nothing happens. Is it supposed to have 5 stars like in illustration, or is it simply supposed to blend color of the first star? Mine doesn’t seem to do anything? I can’t seem to find where the spine is- mine only has one object. Thanks for the help.

13. 
    Crissy April 13th

    Real brain power on dsplaiy. Thanks for that answer!

14. 
    Nike TN Requin March 1st

    出，我按3和确定，并没有任何反应。它应该是有像插图5星，或者是简单的，它应ghjfjfj

15. 
    RSCdev March 9th

    This tuto is one of the best (until now)