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Illustrator Trick #9: Colorful Waves

Abstract wave blend

This is a common trick to produce abstract colorful waves in illustrator. First you draw a curve line using the Pen Tool and drag a copy of it by holding Alt/Option. Select the Blend Tool and click the first line and hold ALt/Option while you click the second line to show the Blend Options. Change Spacing to Specified Steps and set it to 5.

Select the Direct selection Tool and edit the curve. Make sure the 2 lines intersect each other to crate a nice wave. Change one of the line stroke to a darker color to see it blend into a colorful wave.

This technique can be used to create nice colorful waves for background deign. Try blending 3 lines of different color to make it even more attractive.

Back to 101 Illustrator Tips & Tricks »
See Illustrator’s Blend Tool: A Comprehensive Guide for more uses of Blend Tool.

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+Add Comment14 Comments

  1. Gravtar for virendra(INDIA)
    virendra(INDIA) January 1st

    i have searched many sites no one given creating waves in corel

    at last yuor site told me about this.

    thank u

  2. Gravtar for student
    student June 7th

    This isn’t very helpful. There needs to be more specific steps / directions.

  3. Gravtar for stef
    stef June 12th

    It IS very helpful. It’s quite simple, not much explaining to do. But I would have never known about it if I hadn’t read this, thanks!

  4. Gravtar for Bigbad
    Bigbad July 6th

    Thanks for this small lesson!

  5. Gravtar for Iain
    Iain August 3rd

    Totally frikkin’ epic! This is just what I needed for the last week – you saved my skin! Thanks! :)

  6. Gravtar for Jason at Viper Design
    Jason at Viper Design January 26th

    At last I find a tutorial of how to create these designs! I’ve been buying this style of graphic off iStock but knew there must be a simple way to build them. Cheers

  7. Gravtar for Jorge
    Jorge April 8th

    Great stuff!!!
    I just saved a lot of time for a specific project

    Tanks a lot!!!

  8. Gravtar for Emily
    Emily September 23rd

    Saweet!!

  9. Gravtar for Tania Ali
    Tania Ali February 27th

    Gr8 :)

  10. Gravtar for Adeshina Ojo
    Adeshina Ojo April 27th

    This is really cool, i have been searching the internet for so long on how i’m gonna do this but this tutorial is kinda helpful but how can i make the waves to have more than one color?

  11. Gravtar for lisa
    lisa August 1st

    cool! thanks!

  12. Gravtar for Emad
    Emad August 11th

    Cool ! Thank you … ♥

  13. Gravtar for marisol
    marisol December 1st

    Yea this is pretty cool but for the people who really are barely getting starting to get familiar with the pen tool.

  14. Gravtar for Yasir Imran
    Yasir Imran May 19th

    Awesome work you did for me, I was not familiar with the term ‘Blending’ and I was searching this trick from weeks, after lot of searching I found this tip. And spending something like 3.5 hours I managed to understand what you were trying to explain. If you have done it with snapshots I might get it quickly, Still many thanks for this great work.

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