Gradient Mesh Tool Adobe Illustrator

A gradient mesh that I did a few years back in Adobe Illustrator. I've been considering visiting the tool  again, but the sheer amount of time it takes to create these is daunting. I spent well over 70 hours on this Coke bottle alone. Now if someone would just hire me at an hourly rate to produce a few of these, that would be just fine (hint-hint).

Illustration Job For Midnight Express Books

Midnight Express Books is a publisher that helps inmate authors get their books published and out into the public. I have had the pleasure of working with them on numerous occasions, with various authors, and they never fail to send me interesting and challenging subject matter. For this book I was given the following description to work from:


"The author tells me that he was thinking that the background would be a major city. In the foreground would be a black guy's face, he's smiling and has some visible gold teeth. He's looking like he's deep in thought and what he's thinking about, somehow pictured around him, are:

1. a pretty Hispanic woman with a nice body
2. a nice home
3. a Benz or Lexus truck."



After a little back and forth communication about how to actually illustrate the daydreams, dropping the idea of putting a house in there(it just didn't work well for the layout), and a few proofs later, we finally landed on a concept fitting the authors description as well  as working well visually. The final version turned out fantastic, and remains my favorite piece to date for Midnight Express Books.

Dope Boy Dreams 

If you are interested in what the story is about, you can always pick up  a new or used copy at Amazon.com

Gradient Mesh in Illustrator

The image below was created using the Gradient Mesh tool in Adobe Illustrator. It is not a photograph or for that matter an edited photograph. It is a purely vector illustration which I created by hand. Some may ask, "Why bother when you have the photograph?" The answer is simple, being a vector image this can be enlarged infinitely with no loss of quality. The photograph, on the other hand, will lose quality rather quickly when enlarging it. This is one of the advantages to working with vector graphics. 

Above: Vector Artwork created in Illustrator using the gradient mesh tool

Above: reference photo

Above: wire-frame of the gradient mesh, this one was  much simpler than I thought it would be.