Hello everyone. I’m glad you could join us on this fantastic day. I thought today I would show you how to make a nice cheerful sun to live with the clouds we made in the last tutorial.

Step 1:
Let’s start with our standard 600px by 600px Illustrator canvas. Like I said last time, you can really set your canvas to whatever size you like; but if you use a different sized canvas, the numbers I use throughout the day may not work as well for you as they do for me.

Step 2:
Now we’re just going to drop in a nice little circle using the Ellipse tool (l). I put this right in the center of my canvas, but you can put it wherever you like. You know what, it doesn’t even need to be a circle. You can put down an oval if you want. Always remember, this is your sun, so have fun with it.

Step 3:
Next you’re going to make larger circle around your first circle. The way I do this is by selecting my first circle, holding down ALT, and hitting either the LEFT key to duplicate my shape. Then I hit the RIGHT key to move it right back over top of the first circle, and then scale it out and make it bigger. Once it’s a size I like, then I hit CTRL + SHIFT + [ to send the big circle back behind our little circle.

Remember now, this is just the way I like to do it. If you have a different way, use it. And let me know, we’re all learning together here.

Step 4:
Ok. Now that your circles are happy together, make sure your outer circle is selected, and give it a nice Zig Zag effect (Effect>Distort & Transform>Zig Zag).

I set the size to 3%, clicked the relative circle, and gave it 7 ridges per segment. I picked relative so that no matter what size we make our sun in the end, the size of the halo will stay the same. I also make sure to set the points to corner to give good definition to my sun’s halo. Maybe you want more points, or less, or a smooth wavy halo. It’s your world, let your imagination run wild.

Step 5:
Next we’re going to set a light yellow to yellow radial gradient on the inner circle. Since this is a cheerful sun, I’m making sure the face of our sun has a nice bright gradient. Now we’ll use the gradient tool (g) to pull the gradient down from the upper right part of the sun’s face and give a hint of depth.

Step 6:
We’re going to go crazy now. Let’s select our outer halo and set a yellow to orange radial gradient. Grab the gradient tool (g) and have some fun with the size and position of your gradient.

Step 7:
To finish up, I used the sky and some of our cloud friends from the last tutorial to give a home to our new sun. I took the stroke off all these guys to make everything look much softer. All of the clouds have a little drop shadow on them, just like the last time, so they look like they’re just floating right along without a care.

Now I think we’re going to call this one done. I hope you had a fun time today, I know I did. From all of us at ClickPopMedia, have fun with Illustrator, and God bless you.

We’re all big Bob Ross fans here at ClickPopMedia. Today, in the tradition of the Joy of Painting, I am going to show you how to make a happy little cloud.

Welcome back everybody. I sure am glad you could make it out today. Does everyone have their Illustrator warmed up and ready to do some vectorizing? Good.

Step 1:
What I have here is a 600 px by 600 px Illustrator document, but you can use whatever size makes you happy. Keep in mind though, if you do things at a much different size, most of the values I give you won’t translate correctly.

Step 2:
The next thing we’ll do is make a sky for our clouds to live in. So let’s make a 600 x 600 square with a nice white to blue radial gradient fill. Let’s try and get a gradual fade between the colors, just a whisper of a gradient. You can adjust your gradient using the Gradient Tool (hotkey G).

Step 3:
Create a new layer and now we’ll start to make our little cloud. Make two circles (hotkey L) that will be the outer boundaries of your cloud. There we are

Step 4:
Now then, we’re going to build up on our cloud by making more circles of different sizes.

There it is, the top of our cloud. Don’t over think this step to much. The clouds are very free, they just float around and have fun all day. So we’re just making some fluffy, carefree clouds.

Step 5:
Well, now we’re going to finish off our basic shape. Take the pen tool (hotkey P) and create a shape that covers up all the open space left in your cloud. You can also continue using circles or curves if you want to have a puffy bottom on your cloud. Just let your imagination go.

Step 6:
Now we get to the fun part. Illustrator has a neat little tool called the Pathfinder. Maybe I’ll do a bigger tutorial on the Pathfinder later, but for now we’ll just keep it simple. We are going to be using the Pathfinder to make the shapes we’ve made come together. So go ahead and select all the shapes in your cloud. Now click the “Add to Shape Area” button in your Pathfinder tab and immediately after that, before you do anything else, click the “Expand” button and watch that little rascal come together.

Step 7:
Now we’re going to give the cloud some character. Remember, this is your cloud, so you can do any little thing with it. I’m just going to show you what I did. I thickened up the outer stroke a bit, just to make our little friend look even a little puffier than before. I also added a light gray to white linear gradient coming up from the bottom of the cloud just to give the indication of depth and shadow.

Step 8:
I’ve made a few more clouds to live together, so our friend isn’t lonely. Each of our clouds has just a whisper of a drop shadow (Effect>Stylize>Drop Shadow: Opacity 30%, 0px offsets, 5px blur) just to soften things up.

And now we have a finished cloud family. So with that I’ll tell you good bye. I look forward to seeing you again. From all of us at ClickPopMedia, have fun with Illustrator, and God bless you.

GodBless:VQ