Create a Swirly Lollipop Using the Spiral Tool

In this tutorial, you’ll be shown an easy and accurate way of creating your own swirly lollipop using a custom Art Brush and the Spiral Tool in Adobe Illustrator. If you’re a beginner Illustrator user, this tutorial will help you get familiar with how to use Illustrator’s tools creatively.

Open a new document that is 600px wide by 800px high. Now make sure you have Smart Guides turned on by going to View > Smart Guides.

First thing we’ll do is make the gradients needed for the lollipop’s shading. Use the Rectangle Tool (M) to draw a small square of any size and give it a linear gradient with three sliders. Then use RGB colors orange (247, 147, 30), yellow (252, 238, 33), and orange (247, 147, 30) setting the middle slider to a location of 30%.

Now draw another for the second swatch and by default this should be filled with the same gradient. Delete the last slider so you’re left with only two and change the colors to re (133, 0, 0) and dark red (193, 39, 45) with a location for the center at 80%. Now we can drag them off to the side where we’ll use them later.

Click on the artboard, with the Rectangle Tool (M) still selected and draw a rectangle 15px wide by 30px in height. Change the fill to yellow.

Next go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform and move the rectangle 15px horizontal and for number of copies enter 34, then hit OK. Now proceed to Object > Expand Appearance.

Click anywhere on the artboard to deselect the new set of rectangles. Then use the Direct Selection Tool (A) to click on the second rectangle from the left. While holding Shift, select every other rectangle from there on. When that’s done simply change the fill color of the selected rectangles to red.

Hit Command + A to select all the rectangles, then go to Object > Transform > Shear, and give a Shear Angle of 30 degrees. The axis will remain Horizontal, then click OK.

From the Toolbar select the Rounded Rectangle Tool, then drag it from the top left corner of the rectangles you created earlier all the way over to the bottom right. While holding it in place, hit the Left Arrow key on the keyboard once to make the edges as round as possible. With Smart Guides enabled everything should just snap into place.

Select this and the rectangles below the Pathfinder Panel (Window > Pathfinder) simply select Crop.

Drag this new shape into the Brush Panel and in the New Brush options select Art Brush. The only setting you will need to change here is the direction, this will need to go in the opposite direction which is left. With that done we’ll no longer need the shape we created earlier so you can go ahead and delete it.

From under the Line Segment Tool (/) select the Spiral Tool and click in the center of the artboard to bring up a dialogue box. Give your spiral a radius of 250px, with a 90% decay and 11 segments making sure the style goes in a clockwise direction.

Keeping the spiral selected, proceed to the Brush Panel and select the Art Brush you made earlier giving it a stroke of 4px. Now using the Selection Tool, hold Shift, and rotate the new lollipop clockwise 90 degrees.

Use the Direct Selection Tool (A) to select the bottom point on the spiral. Then hold down the Shift key and nudge upwards eight times. Then nudge to the right five times. Next, grab hold of the left handle and drag downward about 35 degrees, you might have to play around with this until it looks right. Lastly select the point farthest to the left and nudge inwards about ten pixels or until it looks right.

When satisfied go to Object > Expand Appearance to make your stroke into a solid set of shapes.

Use the Magic Wand Tool (Y) to select all of the shapes with a red fill. Then use the Eyedropper Tool (I) to apply the red gradient you created in step one. Now repeat for all the yellow shapes this time filling with the yellow gradient.

Now we just have to fix all the angles. Using the Direct Selection Tool (A) and the Gradient Tool (G) work your way around the lollipop and draw new gradients from the outside and drag inwards to the nearest edge. You don’t have to be really accurate but we want to avoid any obvious straight lines, so it may take a few attempts before you get it looking just right.

For the missing piece in the center, copy the lollipop (Command + C) and paste in front (Command + F). Then in the Pathfinder Panel click Unite, followed by a Right-click on the new shape, then choose Release Compound Path from the menu. Now just delete the outer shape and fill what’s left with the appropriate gradient.

Select the entire lollipop and group it together (Command + G).

For highlights draw a circle slightly smaller than the lollipop itself and fill it with white. On top of this draw another circle slightly larger and more to the left. When you’re happy with what you’ve got, select both and then choose Minus Front from the Pathfinder Panel. Take this shape, hold Alt and drag another copy, then rotate and resize it as you see fit. I used four copies in total, but you can use more or less if you’d prefer.

With the last reflection still selected, go to Select > Same > Fill Color and group (Command + G). Now just change the Opacity to 50% and you’re done! Drag the Selection Tool over everything you’ve created so far, group together once more, then hold Shift and scale everything down to approximately 350px in width.

Now we’ll work on creating the lollipop’s stick. Select the Rectangle Tool and click on the artboard. Create a new shape 20px wide by 430px in height. Give the stick a linear gradient fill using the colors RGB Gray (179, 179, 179) to light gray (245, 245, 245) with a location of 30%.

Change to the Ellipse Tool (L), and click once more on the artboard to create a ellipse with the same 20px width, but only a height of 3px. Drag this to the bottom of the rectangle, snap it into place, and with both shapes selected choose the Unite option over in the Pathfinder Panel. Now make a new copy (Command + C) and Paste in Front (Command + F).

Select both the lollipop and stick, then in the Align Panel click on Horizontal Align Center. This just makes it easier for us to see where the shadow from the lollipop needs to be on the stick. Grab the Pen Tool (P) and the draw a shape with a slight curve at the bottom, it doesn’t need to be perfectly accurate; it just needs to somewhat match the curve of the lollipop. Select this and the stick copy below it, then go to the Pathfinder and apply Intersect.

Now all we have to do is make it actually look shaded. With the new shape highlighted, go to Recolor Artwork and select Global Adjust from the options menu. Lower the Luminosity to -15% and click OK. Select both the stick and shadow, then group them together (Command + G). Finally, apply Object > Arrange > Send to Back and nudge up or down as needed.

Lastly, we just need to create the shadow. For this, we need to draw a rectangle about 250px wide by 60px in height. Give it the same color fill as your background, which in this case set it to white. Now with the Mesh Tool (U) add a point roughly one third of the way up and about an eighth of the way in from the right side.

You’ll also need to place one point slightly above, slightly below, and finally to the right. Try if you can to make these approximately the same distance apart from each other. With those all done, now click on the center mesh point and change the fill color to a light gray. The exact color I used was R=171, G=171, B=171, but you can make it as light or as dark as you like.

Finally, using the Direct Selection Tool (A) go over to the points on the left edge of the rectangle. The center of the shadow needs to stay put. Now shift-click and drag the point above it towards the top left, but not actually touching the corner. Do the same for the point beneath, then Object > Arrange > Send to Back.

Now you’re done and here’s the result! Go have fun and experiment with different colors!

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Positive Affirmations - Make Your Affirmations More Effective Using Subliminal Messages

While subliminals can be used to enhance the effectiveness of positive affirmations many people are wary of subliminal messages. Yet every day you are subjected to thousands of subliminal messages but, by definition, you're just not consciously aware of them.

When people think of subliminal messages people think of audio messages but subliminal messaging can be visual as well. For instance, it's estimated that we see over 3,000 adverts every day. But do you remember seeing so many adverts - of course not.

So the point is that you're being subjected to subliminal messages whether you are aware of it or not. Therefore, it makes sense to be proactive and deliberately use them to your advantage with respect to your positive affirmations.

The following example illustrates how we can be swayed by advertising messages and not even be aware of it.

Guerrilla Marketing Expert, Jay Conrad Levinson was once in a taxi with some of his advertising colleagues on his way to deliver a major presentation. From their excited conversation the taxi driver deduced that they worked in the advertising business and asked:

"Do you really believe that stuff works? Because I can tell you, it doesn't work for me. It never has and it never will. I've never bought anything as a result of marketing or advertising and never will."

Upon which, one of Jay Conrad Levinson's colleagues asked:

"Well, what kind of toothpaste do you use?"

"Oh, I brush with Gleam but it has nothing to do with the advertising. It's because I drive a cab and I can't brush after every meal."

Well, at that time the Gleam campaign theme was for people who can't brush after every meal. And, it wasn't just this taxi driver who fell under the spell of the Gleam advertising campaign. This particular advertising campaign was a big success for Gleam.

But there are lots of ways in which you can be unconsciously influenced by subliminal messages and the extent to which you are influenced by random subliminal messages is affected by your level of awareness and how you've programmed your own mind. Expressed another way, if you don't program your mind, you can be sure that someone else will.

So how can you use subliminal messages to help positively re-program your mind? In this instance, I'm going to limit my response to just audio subliminal messages. You can record your positive affirmations combine them with a suitable backing track allowing your positive affirmations to be played just below the threshold of normal hearing so that they effectively become subliminal.

And, because subliminal messages are programmed for the sub-conscious mind you can apply some interesting techniques to subliminal messages to further enhance their effectiveness. Here are three (3) examples:

1. Add compressed messages

2. Add reversed messages

3. Add stereo-confusion

Adding compressed messages simply means playing more of your positive affirmations in less time and to do this you "compress" the sound waves. And this has the effect of speeding up your subliminal messages. Similarly reversed messages are simply messages played in reverse. Now while they may be incomprehensible to the conscious mind, your sub-conscious is extremely powerful and can decipher these messages.

And actually, because of this you don't even have to play them at sub-audible level. However, as subliminal messages are generally programmed into a soundtrack it results in a more pleasant sound to play them at a low level.

Stereo-confusion refers to a technique where messages are played in such a manner that you hear distinct messages in your right and left ear. This has the effect of separately targeting the left and right hemispheres of your brain. For maximum effectiveness you obviously need to listen to these messages using headphones.

So you can apply these techniques to your positive affirmations and create soundtracks that you can listen to on a regular basis. Despite this, the practice of saying positive affirmations is still important because this is when you can visualize your affirmations and use your feelings and emotions to enhance their effectiveness.

However, when you apply these subliminal techniques to your positive affirmations it makes the practice of your affirmations effortless and, depending on the type of soundtrack you use, you can play your subliminal messages in the background at regular intervals during the day.

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Using Art in the ESL Classroom

Does Art have a place in language learning? I believe it does. Children are naturally creative. They respond to visual images and have most active imaginations. Isn't creating images what art I all about? Art can assist a teacher with many aspects of teaching English.

You don't have to be an artist. If you have artistic talents, then you likely already know the value art can have in the language classroom. If not, here are some ideas for you.

Use art when you are teaching the names of colors:

Primary: White, Black, Red, Blue, Yellow

Secondary: Green, Pink, Orange, Brown, Purple, Gray

What about sky blue, teal, magenta, lilac, scarlet, azure, chartreuse, burgundy, crimson, apple green, lemon or canary yellow, burnt orange, dusty pink, forest green, battleship gray, chocolate brown, mahogany, tan, ivory, off-white, etc.

A color wheel can help you to demonstrate these. Pick up some car brochures from local dealers and see how they describe the colors of their vehicles. These can augment a lesson on using more descriptive adjectives. In one lesson, I first show my class a black and white illustration of a typical office situation with several people engaged in various routines. The students describe what people are doing. Then, I show the students a color version and have them elaborate on their description. Color makes a big difference.

You can use art to teach shapes, simple tools artists use (including tools students use every day such as pencils, pens, erasers, rulers, etc.

A book with different styles of paintings makes a great vocabulary building reference tool. Every painting can be a topic for discussion. Even just reading the various descriptions in the book can be a worthwhile language activity.

I had a two-CD set of 'Great Museums of the World'. You could use your computer mouse to navigate through each museum on the screen, enter different rooms and zoom in on a specific painting - even a section of the painting - which would prompt a pop-up description of what the artist had done. Aside from its artistic merit, what a great teaching tool! Unfortunately, it remained at a former school. I must look for it again.

Drawing programs such as Paint, Corel Draw, ZBrush, Smart Draw, ArtRage and Twisted Brush can be useful if you have artistically inclined learners. Pick a program and open the tutorial section. Students can greatly improve their vocabulary as they learn to use the program. There is a whole world of digital art and digital artists who use these programs to create images for cartoons, animated films and book covers. Creatures that you see in films were more often than not created on a computer. There are special digital art magazines (quite pricey!) and regular art magazines (not so pricey). Any one of these should start our creative and artistic ESL juices flowing. Check out the magazine section of a major bookseller in your area. I have used one of these in an English Conversation class to talk about the images in the magazine.

If, like me, you are teaching in a different culture, students can be invited to bring in a piece of art and 'show and tell'. This is a wonderful speaking opportunity. Think of possible related research and writing assignments you could apply as well. Local artists? Local museums or art galleries? Exhibitions? Art schools? Painting clubs? Any of these may have someone who would be willing to come in to talk to your class about what they do - maybe even put on a short demonstration.

Finally, students can use their artistic talents to illustrate their writing efforts - essays, short stories, descriptions of homes, friends, family, vacation, and other such typical ESL topics. I have had students make Japanese scroll stories where they have six or so panels on which to write and illustrate a short story. They then tape the panels together to form a scroll, tying the finished product with a ribbon. In the next class, students untie their scrolls and read their stories to the class.

Art can add another dimension to teaching English and is another way you can take advantage of local resources to support your efforts. Through the Internet, you have the whole artistic world at your beck and call.

If you use art in your class, I'd be interested in hearing from you.

If you would like a copy of my e-book "Introduction to Teaching Overseas", e-mail me at rwftaylor@gmail.com

Dr. Robert Taylor has been teaching English in Thailand for close to ten years. He also teaches the e-learning TESOL course for Sunbridge Institute of English. http://www.teachesl.org

Quick Tip: Create a Piano Keyboard Ribbon Using 3D Effects

Version: Illustrator CS2 and aboveLevel: IntermediateLength: 3:32

In this Quick Tip you will learn a handy way to map artwork to a 3D stroke to make a flowing piano keyboard. Let’s begin!

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The Advantages of Using a Bedtime Routine Chart in Your Home

You put your child to sleep. You walk into the living room and the child follows behind. It is a normal routine for many families. Bedtime is difficult for many children. Seeing a child a few times each night as they come out for one more hug or scoot out of the hallway to say they miss you - this is pretty normal for most families. Allowing children to keep themselves up late sets poor habits and leads to a difficult struggle to get through the following day.

In the midst of the struggles to get a child to bed, parents understand they are losing valuable sleep time. They know that a lost hour of sleep will turn into a tired and grumpy child the next day. The evening battle of wills will cause a child to wake up the next morning cranky and fighting their parents through the next day.

Children need a rhythm to their day. From morning to evening, it is important that young children are easily moving from one transition to another with ease. This is even more important as the day wraps up in the evening. Children and parents are tired from the long day and need every tool available to make bedtime smooth and comfortable.

A bedtime routine chart can be a helpful tool assisting parents and children to find a rhythm to bedtime. The chart will lay out the final steps of the day from changing into pajamas, brushing teeth, and hearing a story in bed. The chart can use illustrations of each step of the bedtime routine. If you use interchangeable labels, children can have an opportunity to put their parts of the routine in order with help from the parents. Giving children a chance to have a say in their evening routine can go a long way in giving ownership to the sometimes stubborn child.

In our home, we have used charts for the daytime and bedtime. Our bedtime routine chart has a picture of an owl perched on a tree limb. To the side sits five magnets ready to receive the activity labels - which are golden stars. We have found that nice homemade charts bring much more appeal than a simple printed off sheet found on the internet. While you can add more activity labels, we use some that are fairly generic - brush teeth, put on pj's, go to the bathroom, story time, bath time, etc. My wife has drawn illustrations on each label so that both child and parent can "read" the label.

While no chart or routine will make each evening 100% perfect, we have found a helpful amount of rhythm in using our charts in our home. Our child appreciates the appeal and has made a connection to the owl. Just this past week, he spent several days using his imagination as he said he was an owl - even to the point of sharing what little animal parts you could find in his pellets (such an imagination).

If you would like to create your own chart, head to your local craft store and even take your child with you to help. If you are not the crafty type, you might search on the internet to see if you could purchase one for yourself. In our home, we have tried to stay away from simple free internet printouts. We want the chart to become part of our home and our evening routine. It will need to be sturdy enough to make it through the basic abuse brought upon it by both my son and his younger brother. Best wishes to your family and may your adventure towards evening simplicity be a blessing on your home.

To learn more about bedtime routine charts, visit A Kid's Day - a small family owned business creating handmade visual schedules and charts for families.

Common Mistake Made When Using Reflexive Verbs in Spanish

Today I am going to talk about a common mistake that English speaker often make with reflexive verbs in Spanish. I have a story to share with you that will help illustrate my point. A couple days, I was in a recording studio recording our podcast lessons. And there is a section of every podcast that we do called "Los Consejos Para No Sonar Como Un Gringo" (Advice Not To Sound Like a Gringo.)

And when we were doing "Los Consejos Para No Sonar Como Un Gringo" I thought about an American friend here in Medellin, Colombia who always makes certain mistakes when speaking Spanish. And one mistake that he always makes is a mistake that I call the "Excessive use of possessive adjectives when referring to body parts and articles of clothing".

Let me give you a few examples of statements that I have heard him say:

WRONG: Me duele mi cabeza.

He should have said "Me duele la cabeza." If you want to say "my head hurts" or "I have a headache" in Spanish you only need to say "Me duele la cabeza."

"Me duele" literally means "it hurts me." And there is no need in Spanish to use the phrase "mi cabeza" (my head) instead of "la cabeza" (the head)."

It is implied in the phrase "me duele la cabeza" that is my head that hurts me. Surely it would seem strange if someone else's head was causing me a headache. Here's another mistake that I heard him make:

WRONG: Voy a cepillarme mis dientes.

He should have said "voy a cepillarme los dientes." "Voy a cepillar" literally means "I am going to brush." And there is no need in Spanish to use the phrase "mis dientes" (my teeth) instead of "los dientes" (the teeth). It is implied in the phrase "voy a cepillarme los dientes" that you are going to brush your teeth. That's because we usually don't brush someone else's teeth.

I have one more example. I went to my same American friend's house a few days ago. When I arrived, his girlfriend must have been in the bathroom showering. And he wanted to make sure that she didn't come out of the bathroom undressed not knowing that I was there. And he yelled out "Ponte tu ropa."

That phrase "ponte tu ropa" is NOT the correct way to say "put on your clothes" in Spanish. He should have said "ponte la ropa."

"Ponte" literally means "put on you." And there is no need in Spanish to use the phrase "tu ropa" (your clothes) instead of "la ropa" (the clothes). It is implied in the phrase "ponte la ropa" that it is YOUR clothes that I am telling you to put on. Unless of course, my friend thought that there was a risk that his girlfriend was going to exit the bathroom wearing his shoes, his pants and his shirt.

It is probably obvious to you why my American friend made these mistakes when speaking Spanish... Because that's the way speak in English. Well, sometimes we speak that way in English.

Although in English we may just say "Put some clothes on" without specifying whose clothes you want someone to put on. But we would never simply say "I am going to brush THE teeth." Despite the fact that it is obvious to the listener whose teeth you are going to brush, you would still make it clear that you are going to brush your teeth by saying "I am going to brush MY teeth."

I just wanted to tell you about this mistake so that you avoid the mistake of excessively using possessive adjectives when referring to body parts and articles of clothing when using reflexive verbs in Spanish. And always keep in mind that the Spanish language has its own set of rules of grammar and many are not consistent with English rules of grammar.

Pat Jackson is the Founder of Learning Spanish Like Crazy - the only learning Spanish method that teaches real authentic everyday conversational Latin American Spanish. Pat presently lives in Medellín, Colombia - the City of Eternal Spring. If you would like to get FREE Instant access to the first 2 MP3 auido lessons of Learning Spanish Like Crazy and get FREE instant access to 10 learning Spanish videos from one of our BEAUTIFUL native-Spanish speaking Latina instructors, then go here now: Learn Spanish online That's http://www.LearningSpanishLikeCrazy.com/

Create a One Stroke Tropical Flower Using Adobe Illustrator CS6

In today’s tutorial I’m going to show you how to create “one stroke” flowers, inspired by a nail art process. It’s aimed specifically at beginners and is great at showing some awesome effects with the new Adobe Illustrator CS6 gradient on stroke feature.

Recently, I’ve been following a friend’s journey into creating nail art designs… such a delicate art form in such a tiny space. What grabbed me was a technique called “one stroke flowers”, which is where you use two nail polish colors on a brush to produce a gradient effect for a petal.

I was curious to how this was done so I ended up checking out videos on YouTube. If you’re like me, you’d recognize that this process can be duplicated in vector, especially with the new feature gradient on stroke in Illustrator’s CS6. So let’s get creating!

Start with drawing an even circle using the Ellipse Tool (L). You can do this in two different ways. Click once on the canvas to get the below dialogue box and enter in the Width and Height values shown. Now hold Alt + Shift while drawing your circle. Both will produce even circles.

Within the Stroke panel, change the Weight to 60pt and you’ll get the donut-like shape shown below.

Towards the bottom of the panel, I’m going to use a Profile. Specifically I’m going to use “Width Profile 1?. The reason I’m going with this profile is to give the impression of simulated pressure on the stroke.

Now to rotate the circle so the thinnest part of the stroke is at the bottom. Select the circle and go to Object > Transform > Rotate and enter in the value 270 degrees, then click on OK.

Using the Direct Selection Tool (A), I’m going to move the top and bottom points of the circle to produce a flat bottom-teared drop shape. First click on the top point and then either using your arrow keys, nudge upwards or use your mouse/pen stylus to pull upwards. You’ll want to keep the point still horizontally central; so if you’re using the mouse/pen stylus method, hold Command while pulling upwards.

Repeat the process for the bottom point, select it first and then move it upwards slightly.

I’m going to use the Free Transform Tool (E) to first reduce the width of the shape. Even though it’s not required because it’s a symmetrical shape, if you wanted to reduce the width only of a shape evenly on each side, hold down on Alt and pull inward one of the middle points of the boundary box.

After I did that, I decreased the overall shape to produce a petal shape. You can do this evenly by holding Alt + Shift and pulling one of the corners inwards.

Now you have your petal shape, go into the Swatch panel and select one of the default gradients to be applied to the Stroke. I went for the yellow the red linear gradient. Within the Gradient panel, select the Stroke option “Apply gradient across stroke”.

Of course, with the flower I’m wanting to create, I’m not wanting to use all of these shades. Now it’s time to modify the colors in the gradient. In the Gradient panel you’ll have a visual representation of the transition of colors from one to another. You can modify the appearance of a gradient by moving the Gradient Sliders around. In this example, I’ve moved all the Sliders to the left to give a yellow tip to the petal.

I don’t actually want to use the red and I want to use a more tropical looking magenta pink, so I’m going to drag and drop the magenta pink (C=0, M=95, Y=20, K=0) from the Swatch panel over onto the red Gradient Slider.

If you want to add new colors without changing an existing color as I’ve just done, you can just drag and drop colors into the gradient in any available space. Below I’ve added a magenta pink/purple shade (C=35, M=100, Y=35, K=10) and then two purples (C=75, M=100, Y=0, K=0).

There are other ways you can modify the color of an existing Gradient Slider. In this case, I want to darken the purple on the far right of the gradient. Double-click on the Gradient Slider you wish to alter and you’ll get a Color panel. I’ve increased the value of “K” to 80 to add more black to the color. Just hit Enter once you’re done.

I then moved the bottom Gradient Sliders around to make the dark purple look more like a vein in the petal.

There are other things you can do in the Gradient panel, such as reducing the Opacity of Gradient Sliders. What this does is it produces a transparent gradient. Although we’re not using those in this tutorial, you can find out more and try them out in this Illustrator bug tutorial.

If you’re wanting more space to add colors or modify a gradient, you can increase the size of the panel by pulling the bottom right corner. If you’re wanting to remove colors from the gradient, click on the Gradient Slider along the bottom you wish to move and click on the trash icon or “Delete Stop”.

I’ve removed several colors from our gradient using Delete Stop, which you can see below:

Now we have our basic petal shape and color scheme, I’m going to use the Transform effect to duplicate our petal. This way I don’t need to go through the process of Copy and Pasting and then moving the petal into place.

Go into the Appearance panel. While your petal is selected, click on Stroke to highlight it as we’re wanting to apply our effect to the stroke only. Along the bottom of the panel is an “fx” icon or “Add New Effect”. Click on this and go to Distort & Transform > Transform.

You’ll get a Transform Effect dialogue box as shown below. I’m going to create a flower with six petals, similar to a clematis. As there are 360 degrees in a circle, I’ll want the 6 petals to be evenly spread around the circle. Therefore 360 divided by 6 will equal 60 degrees between each petal. This means the Rotate Angle will need to be set to 60 degrees.

In the Options box, I’m going to want to rotate the petal from the middle bottom of the petal. So in the boundary box icon, select the middle bottom point. As for the Copies, enter in the value “5?… I’ll explain why in a moment. Click on OK when done.

Although we’re wanting six petals for our flower, we already have one petal created and that’s our original petal. Therefore we’ll need to duplicate the petal another five times. This explains why in the Copies field, you’ll always need to enter in one less of the items you want displayed. Also worth noting that a positive angle value will duplicate your petals in an anti-clockwise fashion, whereas a negative angle value will duplicate your petals in a clockwise fashion.

Now to begin work on the leaves. I’m going to use a similar method as I did with the petals by modifying a circle drawn with the Ellipse Tool (L). This time it won’t have a flat bottom. I’ll just be using the Direct Selection Tool (A) to pull the top point upwards.

I’m again using a Gradient on stroke, however it will be a 40pt Stroke Weight. It will still use Width Profile 1.

In the Appearance panel, I’m going to apply a different effect to the Stroke. Select the Stroke as before and go into Add New Effect > Distort & Transform > Zig Zag with the settings shown below:

Now we have our basic leaf shape, I’m going to alter the gradient within the Gradient panel. I’ve kept the yellow at the left and then added three greens: Light Green (C=50, M=0, Y=100, K=0), Medium Green (C=85, M=10, Y=100, K=10) and Emerald Green (C=90, M=30, Y=95, K=30). If you noticed in the previous step, the dark purple distorted in the center of the leaf, so I’ve moved the Emerald Green Gradient Slider to hide the distortion there.

If you look at the flower and the leaf, you’ll notice we have a bit of a gap in the center. So I’m going to get around this by drawing a Dark Purple filled circle with the Ellipse Tool (L) behind the flower and draw an Emerald Green shape with the Pen Tool (P) behind the leaf.

I’m going to add a central vein to the leaf by using the Line Segment Tool (\) to draw a vertical line. Hold down on Shift and click-drag down or up to draw a perfectly vertical line. This line will have a 6pt Stroke Weight and I’ve applied the Width Profile 5 to it. If the larger end is not towards the bottom, you can always change this by clicking on the Flip Along button to the right of the Profile drop down menu.

I’ve then applied our leaf gradient to the stroke and modified the Gradient Sliders to give a more even distributed gradient.

Time to organise our shapes. First, I Grouped together all the shapes for the leaf (Command + G) and then for the flower. I moved the leaf group below the flower group. It’s always good practice to organize your shapes and layers. If you’d like to read up on this more, you can check out this tutorial on organizing and saving a vector file – very useful!

I’m now going to make some changes to the leaf group. By selecting the group, anything you apply to it (effects, etc…) will affect the whole group. It will treat all the elements within the group as one entity.

I’m going to be using the Transform effect, we did with the petals; yet, I want the leaves to appear in between each petal. So I’m going to rotate the leaf group by 30 degrees as it is halfway between the petals, which are at 60 degree intervals. Select the leaf group and go to Object > Transform > Rotate and then enter in the value 30 and then click OK.

I moved the leaf group now into position with the bottom right tip of the vein on the bottom middle tip of the original petal. Now go into the Appearance panel, you’ll notice it looks slightly different to the individual object options. You can still, however, go to Add New Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform.

In the Transform Effect dialog box, I want the leaves at 60 degree intervals and again, I just need 5 copies. This time, I’m going to select the bottom right corner of the boundary box in the Options section, as it’s going to rotate from the bottom of the vein. Click on OK once done.

You’ll notice in the Appearance panel that you’ll now have your Transform effect listed, which is applied to all contents within the group – as if it was one entity.

To finish off our tropical looking flower, I’m going to add some stigma by drawing several even circles with the Ellipse Tool (L) and give it the yellow to red gradient fill. Now this gradient was originally a linear gradient, yet you alter this simply by clicking on the Type drop down box and selecting Radial.

Today’s tutorial is a beginners one aimed at those who wish to learn some basic tricks and to introduce just a couple of possibilities with the new Adobe Illustrator CS6 feature Gradient on Stroke. Why not try out different values in the Rotate/Angle and Copies options within the Transform effect dialog box to create different styles of flowers?

I have discovered since playing with this feature, that many strokes with complex gradients can be pretty memory hungry. In fact, the file size for this flower a bit over 22mb – eek!

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