Illustrator Tutorial: Realistic Curtain

By Tony Soh

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Let’s draw a nice awesome vector red curtain in this Illustrator tutorial. This lesson assumes that you already have a basic understanding on how the gradient mesh works. We will move on to create a realistic curtain using the gradient mesh. You can use this curtain effect for your movie or theaters related theme design.

1. Creating the skeleton

First, we create Rectangle and fill it with red. Select the Mesh Tool and start clicking along the edge of the rectangle. Creating 3 segments close together will give good results as we can simply change the middle segment to black for shadows.

2. Filling the shadows

With the Direct Selection Tool, we select both the top and bottom points in the segments we want it to make it shadow. After that, fill the points with black. Do this to all the segments we want it to be in shadow.

3. Shaping the curtain

Now we can start shaping the curtain to give it some curves. Select the Direct Selection Tool and select the point we want to modify and move the anchor points to change it to curve lines. Other things you can do with the points is move them closer or further to other points by clicking the Right/Left Arrow Keys. A realistic fold normally starts narrow at the top and end wide at the bottom. Hence, we can use the arrow keys to shift the points closer or further away form each other.

4. Final touhup

To create more folds to the curtain, we can add new points with the Gradient Mesh Tool and fill it will a slightly dark tint. Do this until you are satisfied with your curtain. Below is the final skeleton of my curtain. Hope you guys have a great time creating your own curtain!

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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 all articles writen by this author

• Illustrator Tutorial: Realistic Vector Orange
• Illustrator Tutorial: Old Torn Paper Effect
• Illustrator Tutorial: Vector Plasma Television
• Day 18: Photorealism with Gradient Mesh
• Illustrator Tutorial: Draw a Sunglass Using Gradient Mesh

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+Add Comment52 Comments

1. 
   Ram February 1st

   Excelent

2. 
   Ram February 1st

   good

3. 
   chanduramse February 1st

   It is helpful

4. 
   Nayak February 13th

   Its help me to fulfill my creative idea.
   Thank you

5. 
   Jayesh February 28th

   Excellent !

6. 
   RAVENDRA March 4th

   well tutorial was this it helped me alot in using of gradient mesh

7. 
   Sachu March 15th

   Excellent, So helpful….

8. 
   sagar April 10th

   Best, I can’t believe this
   this is a best tutorial
   thanks

9. 
   Rinoju May 7th

   Thx for sharing

10. 
    Jaimi May 12th

    Made the curtains this morning and used it for my mother’s Mother’s Day DVD! Big Thx

11. 
    iStockdiary May 13th

    Great Jaimi! Can u send me what you have done? I would like to have a look.

12. 
    marizmendi May 15th

    Excellent, Exactly what I’ve been looking for

13. 
    Fasih Ullah June 1st

    i was completely shocked when i saw this tutorials. It’s awesome and really cool stuff….

14. 
    iStockdiary June 1st

    Thanks. You can share it with your friends, stumble it or digg my site. That will be my greatest appreciation~

15. 
    Dar June 10th

    Great tutorial. Thanks for sharing.

16. 
    prince June 21st

    its very nice

17. 
    jenny July 2nd

    thanks a lot! This is a very good tutorial!!

18. 
    Bindu July 29th

    Good Easy Method

19. 
    Joss August 2nd

    LUV IT!!!

20. 
    BogDinamita August 29th

    surprisingly easy method.

21. 
    Zabimaru September 4th

    This is an excellent tutorial. It was so surprisingly easy.

    I also used the warp tool along the lower edge of my curtain to give it a flowing look there instead of a straight edge.

22. 
    dinesh October 6th

    amazing:) thanks for sharing

23. 
    fran December 9th

    this is great! tanks for posting it

24. 
    Jess December 19th

    Thanks for sharing ^_^

25. 
    strony internetowe pozna? January 12th

    It is realy great designs on this site…… this is very helpfull site for web designers…iam a web designer so i am very happy now !

26. 
    sakhir February 2nd

    very use full thanks alot…………….

27. 
    Rebornbear February 16th

    To complete zabimaru’s comment, I’d add that you can pull the clearer “folds” of the curtain out of the original rectangle and push the the darker “folds” inside to make quite a good 3D effect

28. 
    ortak miras March 7th

    very good thanks

29. 
    Treb March 18th

    Great Tut, ive only just started using illustrator about a week ago, and this tut has helped me a lot in doing part of a uni assignment, thanks!!!

30. 
    nasa March 20th

    Great tutorial! I decided to go with a variety of different shades instead of just black — switch the color to HSB and adjust the brightness. This allows sections to “pop out” more and others to be partially in shadow. The other change I made was to add in points where only the top or bottom was darkened, so that they would appear as a fold which started in view.

    Thanks!

31. 
    ekki March 20th

    amazing!!,I don’t think i can do it but you help me a lot.thanks.

32. 
    manas modi April 4th

    its such a simple but effective trick,that i absolutely loved it.

33. 
    madhan May 22nd

    its nice very easy to use thanks u

34. 
    Koby May 29th

    Please, can anybody send this made in illustrator, I am beginner and it is difficult to me. Send me the file (.ai) on tulipm4@yahoo.com if anybody has done it. Thanks.

35. 
    helio Batres July 17th

    fantabuloso, impresionante!!!

36. 
    mindstuck September 26th

    nice tuts!
    THX for sharing..

37. 
    Freehill Media January 18th

    Very nice but what about the bottom of the curtain ?

38. 
    Logo Design Gear April 8th

    Great tutorial. It helps me a lot

39. 
    perde September 23rd

    perde modelleri curtain

40. 
    projektowanie stron lodz September 29th

    good tut man …

41. 
    perde October 14th

    absolutely perfect

42. 
    Grace November 8th

    U R Awesome. Thanks so much! -g

43. 
    perde modelleri March 26th

    has been a useful article

44. 
    Alfred April 12th

    I have a problem here, The color that appear is not really black in the shadows, It’s like a dark red. The color doesn’t appear like your example.

45. 
    Joss May 6th

    Ahhh!.. save my day!!…great tutorial, simple and useful.

46. 
    Voldemort May 9th

    Avada Kedavra!!!!!! and…….scene

47. 
    perde June 23rd

    its such a simple but effective trick,that i absolutely loved it.

48. 
    selvi evangaline August 29th

    VERY USEFUL

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    buy cheap antiques September 11th

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50. 
    diyet November 11th

    Have a nice expression, I have an easy way …

51. 
    düğün mekanları January 1st

    Thank you very useful information from

52. 
    Marivic So January 31st

    done w/ this. cool