Painting with the Mesh Tool in Illustrator - Part 1

Learn how to "paint" your vectors in Illustrator.

If you ever wanted to do some "vector painting" then turning a drawn object into a mesh object will allow you to paint or fill it with many colors that will flow smoothly between each other. Since mesh objects are EPS 8 compatible, you can use them in vectors submitted to Shutterstock, so let’s see this in action!

Creating a Mesh Object

Start by drawing a rectangle with the Rectangle tool and give it a dark bluish colour fill from the Swatches panel. Next, select the Mesh tool (or press U) and click anywhere inside the rectangle. This turns the rectangle into a mesh object and at the same time creates a new mesh point. In a mesh object, mesh points are represented by little diamond shapes and anchor points by squares, this helps to distinguish between the two. Mesh points are similar to regular anchor points but they are much more special because they can be assigned a color and also have mesh lines stemming from them. Once given a color, two factors determine how this color ‘flows’ or radiates outwards from the mesh point. The first is the shape of the mesh lines and the second is the positioning of the mesh point’s handles.

Now, if you go to either the Color or Swatches panels you can give the new mesh point a color. Let’s give it a white color. The result is a white glow.

Moving a Mesh Point

Using the Mesh tool or Direct Selection tool (white arrow) you can move the position of the mesh point by clicking on it and dragging it to a new location. Moving a mesh point will also cause the mesh lines that stem from it to move with it too. This distorts and reshapes the mesh lines and will also cause the color that flows along them to change. If however you want to move the mesh point without distorting the shape of the mesh line you can use the Mesh tool to Shift-click and drag the mesh point. This will restrict the movement of the mesh point to only along one of the mesh lines, either horizontally or vertically depending on which direction you move it.

See part 2 for more tips on manipulating meshes.