Quick Tip: A Gradient Brush?
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Quick Tip: A Gradient Brush?

on May 28th 2010 with 38 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: Illustrator CS4
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
  • Length: 3:08 min

Is it possible to stroke a path using a gradient? No. But in this Quick Tip, Cheryl Graham shows you how to fake it.

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Cheryl Graham trained as a traditional artist in drawing and painting. These days she spends more time in front of the computer than the easel. She's been using Adobe Illustrator for over 15 years. Her Illustrator work has been featured in the "The Adobe Illustrator WOW! Book" and "Real World Illustrator."  

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  • http://www.jacoblee.co.uk Jacob Lee

    Great tip!

    Does it still work if you just use a gradient fill instead of blending before you create the brush?

    • http://pica-ae.deviantart.com pica-ae

      no, that is why this is such a good tip ;)

  • http://designforge.net Chris

    This is a great quick tip! Simple, but incredibly powerful.
    Thanks!

  • http://onebigadventure.wordpress.com Christopher Campbell

    Thanks for that, can honestly say I didn’t know how to add a gradient to a stroke. Going to play around with this and see what I can come up with :)

  • Mark

    Won’t load.

    • http://bucketothought.com/loungekat/blog/ LoungeKat

      Sometimes it takes a while to load, I’ve had to re-load videos before, give it another try and let me know if it happens again :)

  • eric

    Thanks Cheryl,

    your tuts are the best 5 minutes I spend on the web!

  • http://www.vectelligence.com Ilie Ciorba

    Very useful tip, I was thinking a couple of time if it’s possible in general, but didn’t succeed to find an answer.

  • http://www.scottcorgan.com Scott Corgan

    Nothing as cool and rainbow gradients! Except maybe Netscape…

  • http://www.damirkulic.com Damir Kulic

    Nice tutorial. Decided to try a different approach. http://screenr.com/QKA
    Sorry there is no sound as i don’t have a microphone at work. Hopefully it makes sense. Happy Illustrating!

    • Pepitoto

      This tip is better than the way you use because your gradient don’t follow the path’s orientation, it just stay vertical. With the blend-brush way, stripes get aligned with the path’s orientation…

      • Damir Kulic

        I wasn’t saying mine was any better. Just a different approach. I’m sure they both have their own strengths and weaknesses.

  • http://me.nl Peter

    Thanks so much Cheryl, really usefull!!!!! :D

  • Laura

    Great tip! Thanks!

  • Khoi

    Amazing! Thank you for the tutorial, I was looking for this for a long time. It’s really a great tip!

  • http://www.aivault.com Asmaa

    Very interesting i wrote something similar on this topic a more comprehensive tutorial can be found here
    http://www.aivault.com/?p=1453

  • http://www.coroflot.com/mindiola John Mindiola III

    What’s totally whack is that InDesign has a gradient stroke option, but for Illustrator you have to do this workaround. Rubbish.

    • Phin

      Inkscape also let’s me have different gradients for stroke and fill. I’m really disappointed that Illustrator doesn’t.

  • http://www.mpadesign.hu/ Marcipa

    Than’s really good technique.

    Thank you
    M

  • Vladimir

    Great tip!!!
    Tnx!

  • http://www.christinewoodsart.com Christine Woods

    Extremely useful tip! Thank you! To take it a little further, if you go to Object > Expand Appearance you can then apply any of the Photoshop Effects under Effects.

  • http://www.christinewoodsart.com Christine Woods

    Or, in some cases, depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you might be able to skip creating a “gradient brush” by simply expanding a selected stroke or group of strokes to begin with (Object > Expand) and then applying a gradient as you would to any object. This works with text as well.

  • jmarreros

    Very nice and useful tip, thanks

  • Trevor Anderson

    I figured this out by myself by accident but it is possible to add a gradient to a stroke, i know this works in illustrator CS3 and in illustrator CS4, i am not sure if it works in CS5 or not but here is how you do it. Start off by creating your path, then create the desired gradient, once you have done this double click in the fills panel when the window where you can change the color of the shape comes up drag your cursor to the bottom left portion if the screen, once you have done this you will notice a few things one of which is your color spectrum in the color window it is not your usual spectrum and it will look very strange, the second thing you will notice is if you look under the fill where it shows your gradient , the color is no longer a color but a gradient, so the gradient fill option and the color fill option will be the same, if you turn your fill to none and then on the stroke selection change it to a color fill (your gradient) it will be applied to your shape. If this does not work then try again eventually you will get it. I hope you find this interesting, and if someone makes a tutorial of this please credit me thank you.

  • Stefan

    Great tip! Very useful for me! Thanks :)

  • Leo Aslan

    thank you so much, this is really useful!

  • http://www.silberfalke.com/ Christian

    Thanks for sharing! Always wondered how to get that gradient stroke can be done in an editable way.

  • http://www.furtuna.ro ADrian

    Cool tip, thanks for this!

  • liko

    unfortunately, i can see nothing here even i refresh again and again. :(
    ist a video tutorial?

  • Topy

    OMG! this is amezing,such a useful tip :)

  • Maria

    Awesome, great tut

  • http://www.studiobambo.com Fanny

    Thank you for this useful tut!

  • vero

    soo good!!!!! thanks

  • j0e yu

    awesome quicktip! im new to this site and im starting to love it more and more bc of tuts like these! thanks cheryl!

  • http://www.serbancosmin.com serban

    Really useful tip! Thanks so much.

  • Maxud

    Thank you for the Great tip!!! :D

  • Austin

    Simple but powerful!!! Thank you so much :)

  • nick

    i had to look this up after 15 frustrating minutes of failed attempts. it would be so simple to include a feature allowing a stroke to be a blend of colours, such a simple thing and adobe hasn’t made do-able… crazy. thanks for the vid!