Christmas Tree in Adobe Illustrator CS3 - 2
- We will use our new gradient to create the background of our project. In the Layers Panel, rename Layer 1 to "Background". From the Tools Panel, click on the Rectangle tool and set the Stroke to null. The Fill is already set to our gradient. Click and drag with the Rectangle tool to draw a rectangle over the entire area.
- We are ready to add our tree. Create a new layer in the Layers Panel and call it "Tree". Our first step in creating the tree is to draw a curved path with the Pen tool. Set the Fill to null and the Stroke to our ChristmasWhite. From the Control Panel, set the Stroke Weight to .5.
We will put the first anchor point for our path at the lower left of the rectangle. Click with the Pen tool and drag downward to set the first Direction Line. Next, we will create the second anchor point in the center and about one quarter down from the top of the rectangle. Click with the Pen tool and drag upward to create the curved path. With the Selection tool, click outside of the rectangle to set the path. - We will now create the second side of our tree by making a copy of the curved path and flipping it horizontally. With the Selection tool, click on our curved path. From the Menubar, click Edit – Copy and then Edit – Paste. Going back to the Menubar again, click Object – Transform – Reflect. In the Reflect dialog box, set the Angle to 90 degrees.
Now that we have flipped the curved path, we need to position it next to the original. Click on the second path with the Selection tool and drag it into place so that the top points of the two paths overlap. - We will use the Blend tool to finish the tree. Double click on the Blend tool to open the Blend Options dialog box. Set the Spacing to Specified Steps and the number of steps to 20. Click OK to save the settings and your cursor should change to a square. At the bottom of the rectangle, click on the beginning anchor point for the original path and then click on the beginning anchor point for the second path. The tree should fill with repeats of the paths. The result will look something like this. All of the tree should still be selected. From the Menubar, click Object – Group to group all the paths together.
Save your image in Illustrator .ai format. We will add the star and floor base in the next tutorial. The star will be created with the Line and Star tools. The floor base will be created by applying an Ornamental Border brush to a curved path.
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