Creating glass and liquids in illustrator CS4. 8-3-09

This week we’re going to work on more intermediate uses of the pen tool to create the flash shape. Then we’ll look at the various blending modes and highlight techniques to make our glass containers show some depth in the liquid as well as the container themselves.

You may purchase the full high resolution vector flask for your use, only $5.95.

Let’s start out by taking a look at what’s involved in this flask. To do that, take a look at the video to the right where I step through the various layers.

Then let’s start outlining our basic flask shape. We’ll use the pen tool to click and place anchor points around where we want our basic outlines to appear. Don’t worry if it’s not exactly perfect, we’ll be moving them as we go. Do this for half of the flask only. We only do half so that we can copy and reflect, then unite, to get a perfectly symmetrical flask.

After you have your anchor points set, press shift c, to get your convert anchor point tool. With this tool click and drag on the anchor points as shown in the video until you have the effect you’re looking for. If you have an undesirable tangent handle click it with the convert anchor point tool to get rid of it. You can also click and drag it to reposition it. Use your direct selection tool (a) to click anchor points and move them around and click and drag handles to move them together with the opposing handle. You can click an anchor point and use your arrow keys on the key board to nudge them around as well. In the video I eliminated the right handle of the bottom right corner anchor point. In my flask I moved that anchor slightly to the left and dragged out that right handle just a tad to get a rounded corner instead of the sharp corner in the video.

Next we need to make the inside of the flask. The glass will have a certain thickness that we need to account for. Click Object>path>offset path, and offset by a negative number to bring the shape inside our outer glass shape. Next we need to add an inner glow to this shape to give the appearance of the reflection of the liquid inside the flask. The inner glow width should be relatively small (my settings are normal, 50% opacity and 7pt blur) and around the same color (perhaps grayed out a bit) as the liquid. Fill the shape with a tall thin radial gradient and set the opacity of the inner gradient very low (about 10%). Now we need to bump up the top two anchor points so the inner glow doesn't go too far down below the top. We just want a slight reflection/shadow. Also it probably goes without saying, but I'll mention it anyway, the gradient and background fill colors should reflect the background setting your flask is going to be inhabiting. I made this for a clients website, which had a white background, so my color choices are what you see.

To make the liquid I copied the inner shape and pasted in front, CMD c, CMD f, then added two anchor points where I wanted the top of the liquid to be and eliminated the anchor points above that. To add and remove anchor points press the plus or minus key on the keyboard to activate the appropriate tool, then simply click where you want to add or remove them. Then I added one anchor point in the middle of the top of the liquid, used my direct selection tool (a) and moved it up slightly, then shift c to get my convert anchor point tool and clicked the middle anchor point and dragged it out to round out the top of the liquid.

To fill our liquid Choose a radial gradient with the inner color representing the light source and the darker color representing the main liquid color. Edit the gradient as you see fit to give it the desired look and feel. You can see mine on the right.

I added an inner glow to the liquid shape with multiply, 50% opacity, and 9pt blur. I chose a darker liquid color and not black. Next I duplicated this layer widened the inner glow blur to 15pt, darkened up the fill gradient, masked it off so only the left side would show. This creates some depth on the left side for our shadow. To create the top of our liquid just use your ellipse tool and fill with another radial gradient that gives you a suitably lighter color tone than the rest of the liquid as you'll see more of the light reflect off the top.

You can use the rounded rectangle tool to rough in the top shape. Use your direct selection tool and pen tool modifiers to finish it up. We have a radial gradient as shown with an inner glow with normal, 75%, 3pt settings.

The base consists of two parts. The bottom of the flask and the back side of the base of the flask. To give the flask the extra depth go ahead and create the shapes and gradients shown on the right with the appropriate layer blend modes and masks. To get the mask just copy the main liquid layer and paste in front in the mask layer removing all the FX and restoring blending modes, etc. Then fill with the appropriate color. I chose a medium gray for the back base shadow and a linear gradient for the base.

For the highlights (there are three) I put two stripes down the side and used my pen tool to draw in the arch. Use the liquid mask shape you created for the back base shadow and mask off the arch highlight to conform to the liquid. Make sure your stripe highlights are narrow at the top and a bit fatter at the bottom. Fade off the bottom with a linear gradient white to white with the bottom opacity set to zero.

There you have it. I hope you learned something and enjoyed making this flask.

You may purchase the full high resolution vector flask for your use, only $5.95.