Hi guys.
When shading in Illustrator…is the gradient tool the best and only thing to use? I thought you all may have some tips you wouldn’t mind sharing.
Thanks Much!!
sounds like someone might want to take an illustrator brush up class? My wife took one awhile back and it’s safe to say she knows way more about the program than I do. There are gradient meshes you can use, radial gradients work great with enough fussing, but it will be pretty hard to explain it all here. You might try to search for some illustrator tutorials.
gradient mesh tool works well. also the blend tool can be used.
i dont typically shade much in illustrator. Usually just do the linework then bring it into photoshop for shading and rendering.
R
Use the blend tool, works wonders if you do it right. Also ilcs2 has much better application of filters like gaussian blur, radial blur, etc. Add those with transparency and you can make some really nice il renderings.
Make sure when you use the blend tool that the 2 shapes have the same number of points and that virtual lines connecting the corresponding points don’t cross or you’ll have issues/creases. Then don’t forget to double click on the tool to specify whether you want it to be a smooth color gradient (for shading) or specified steps (which works great for patterns that you may want to adjust later on!)
cant find the link now (i think was on the core blog a while ago), but there’s even some guys out there who has done photorealistic renderings using only illustrator and gradient mesh tools. amazing!
here’s a sample (not my work- i wish). there’s another guy who does more product stuff too.
[imghttp://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/5724/2159/1600/In_Thought___Mesh_Outline.jpg[/img]
R
WOW, Richard, that’s pretty amazing, thanks for sharing.
This line I’m working on needs to be presented to buyers. Normally I would hand it over to some graphic designers to make it all pretty but I don’t have that at my disposal at this point. So, I’m doing the best I can. I don’t have time to take a class to refresh my memory, I figure this forum is here for questions, etc. Thanks for the input guys. 
The guy http://www.techvector.com has some amazing stuff.
Check out the realistic and technical sections under illustrations. He changed his website though, you used to be able to mouse over the renderings to see the outlines but it’s not there anymore, too bad.
also
notice there is a tutorials tab on the left