How to make gradient stroke overlap & mix colors in Adobe Illustrator

Hi, in this video we're going to look at more Blending Modes. We're going to look at Gradients along Strokes. They kind of start overlapping and doing fun stuff. We'll also look at jamming a Gradient inside Type. Just so you know, it's so that you can kind of do this. You can see how they start interacting with each other. You can see, kind of cool, unexpected colors and awesomeness start happening. So that's what we're going to do in this video, let's jump in. 

First up, open up 'Gradient Color Mixes' from your 'Exercise Files'. This is a mock up. I made this actually in XD. If you haven't used XD, it's great for prototyping websites or apps. I've got a course on that, go check that out. So I've made this, but I want to add a flurry of color. Like we saw on the side here, when we used Blending Modes. Something like XD doesn't have this, so we'll end up swapping between XD to do all the kind of core stuff, like buttons and navigation stuff. Then out to Illustrator to do some slightly more advanced kind of things, like Color Blending. More color blending, yes. 

I'm going to use the Curvature Tool to make that first bike. Click once, click again, then kind of make it that shape. Now what I would like to do is, by default, it would probably just have a black line. You might have a Fill, get rid of the Fill, it might be white, and no Stroke. Remember, in an earlier tutorial, you might not have done it. So what we can do is, first of all, the Width Tool, it's this guy here. I'm going to grab this end to kind of make it-- that gives me my nice even kind of pokey thing. 

Next thing, I want to add a Stroke Gradient. There's kind of a new version of Illustrator. Under 'Strokes', if you're using this particular file, I've got all these Gradients already loaded in here for you. If you don't, obviously you can use the Gradient Tool. It's under 'Window', 'Gradients', and make your own. But I'm going to click on one of these, decide which one I want to use. No right or wrong. You might hate Gradients. Now the one thing with Gradients though, is if I open up 'Gradient Options', or go to 'Window', 'Gradient', then applying it to the Stroke, you need to go left to right because that's what it's doing. Or the second one in this, that's what I want. I want it to kind of follow the line. This one here goes left to right, following the line, this one goes straight down following the line. This one here just goes like left to right regardless of where the Stroke goes. Hopefully that makes sense. 

You can flip it, there's an option there to flip, deciding on how you want to do it. All I'm going to do now for a second is, let's speed this up because all I'm going to do is rotate them, and spin them around. So let's go speedy version. Okay, we're back. If you were to watch that real time, it took me forever. I don't know why, I'm just trying to-- I don't know, it's not flowing right. But you get the idea, right? We got some kind of curves and gradients. I'm going to select all of them on the top here and basically all we do is we go to the Blending Mode, which is under 'Opacity', and go to 'Normal', and just kind of play around with the ones that we like. Instantly darker, look's kind of cool. Don't worry about the interaction with this navigation, we’ll fix that. 

I'm looking for these kind of joints where things start overlapping, and doing cool stuff. Now, it will depend on the colors that you're using. So have a work your way through and just see what-- some cool interactions here. Remember that shortcut, 'Command H'? 'Command H' just kind of hides all the lines because it's quite hard to kind of see how they interact with those lines. 'Command H' just hides all the center bits. Usually turn back on. Multiply, Color Burn, well Color Burn is kind of nice. Watch what we're doing. Now I'm just messing about, I'm going to do some cropping. You can skip on to the next video if you like. I'm going to do some tidying up when I'm finished. 

So, clicked every single one of these. If you know a shortcut from going through these, I know what it is in Photoshop. Then here, I kind of look it out in Illustrator. I have to click on every single one. All right, nearly darkened. Couple of things I want to do, is I just want to crop it in, and move-- We'll add a Gradient to the text as well, so do hang around. Disappeared already? No. Sorry about that. I'm going to grab the Rectangle Tool. I'm going to draw a rectangle, that's the whole size of the thing. Basically his job. I'm going to hold 'Shift', grab these guys as well. I got all of them, 'Command H' to turn those back on. 'Command 7' to turn it into a Clipping Mask. Now I'm going to click on it and send it to the back, behind the navigation. 

What I'll do for the navigation-- Do I want him behind the navigation? Definitely want it behind the buttons, but maybe, not the actual Nav bar. What we'll do for the Nav bar is, we'll pick a Gradient for you, buddy. Come on, you're going to be that one. Too much. And save it down here. Eye Dropper Tool, what I might do is-- so select on this guy, Eye Dropper Tool, click on him. Then into my Gradients, with him selected, Fill at the front. Fill him over so he's kind of balanced out. Now what you might want to do is add Gradients to text. Over here, I've outlined this text, works just as good for regular typed text but I've outlined it because you might not have this font. And I'm quite precious about this font. 

So what I'd like to do is, it's Museo, or Roboto; can't remember. Anyway, we're going to add a Gradient to it, but if you add Gradient to either text, or like this one, kind of outlines the text. Look what happens if I go to 'Fill' and I go, I want you to be that kind of same Gradient. It does it individually, per thing. An easy way to get around that, is just to go to 'Object' it's 'Command 8', but if you go to 'Object' 'Compound Path', there it is there, 'Make'. Make an object, 'Compound Path', 'Make'. Nothing really changes except now, when I say, give you a Gradient, it makes life a lot easier. Where are you? That color. 

You can see, it kind of goes across all the text rather than kind of starting and stopping all the way through. It might be hard to see because it's quite thin. A little this side, a little that side. All right, so that's going to be it for this video, more Color Blending. I guess I just wanted to show you the kind of things that happen just with Blending Modes. So many cool things. All right, I'll see you in the next video.