Tomato Soup - Adobe Illustrator Tutorial

Jacquelin Vanderwood May 1, 2003 1 Start by right-clicking on the top tomato below and pasting it into Illustrator. 2 Select the ellipse tool with a color that will stand out preferably green in this instance. Set the ellipse to 50% opacity. 3 Select Create Gradient Mesh. 4 Set Rows and Columns to 25. 5 Select the Warp Tool and double-click on it. Set the Warp Tool Options to Width 50, Height 50, Angle 0, Intensity 100; Detail and Simplify are unchecked to keep the edges simple. 6 Begin adjusting the shape to conform with the picture behind it. 7 Select the Clone Brush Tool (a Vector Studio 2 tool) by double-clicking on it. Set Intensity to 100, Randomize to 50, and Brush Size to 50. Set the layer transparency back to 100%. 8 Press the Shift key and click on the background. Begin painting on the green tomato. If you find to many edge discrepancies, press Ctrl+Z a few times, increase the size of the Warp tool and readjust the edges. You may have to do this a number of times to get it exact. Try and also stay inside the tomato as the background will show upon the edges otherwise.  9 If you need to adjust some more, select the Warp tool, and if necessary, reduce the size of the tool down by double-clicking on it. Go back over it with the Clone Brush Tool. 10 This is the simplest of all tutorials that you can learn this technique. I went ahead and used some of the other tools included in Vector Studio 2 to add shadows to the actual tomatoes.   Copyright 2003, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved