Hi everyone. Uh, we are going to use our blending mode skills  to make this lino cut effect. This is meant to be like a flower bud ready bursting for uh,  summertime, but now I'm looking at, it kind  of looks like a cactus slash watermelon  slash mountain range. But anyway, it's lino cut effect and it looks cool  because I said so let's jump in  and I'll show you how I made it. Alright, uh, to get started,  I've got a file called lino cut open. You do not need it, it's just a background.

I'm gonna use my pen tool to draw my first shape a  and I'm gonna draw something that kind of,  I'm gonna click and drag down. You could use your coverage tool,  you could use your pencil tool. I'm drawing some sort of uh, leafy shape, okay? Now the trick with it is the blend  tool won't work if you'd like. Try and complete this, okay? It needs to be two separate things.

You join up. So I've got this first one. Now separately, lemme use the pen tool to join up this side. I can't obviously join, I can't start up here  because it just joins the line. So what I'm gonna do is deselect command shift a control  shift a deselect, okay? And I'm just gonna start close to it  and get it kind of close.

How many points do I want? Maybe just two. Can I do it with two? Yeah, that looks all right. And then afterwards I'm gonna go to my direct selection tool  and I can get them to look like they overlap. Can you see their snap?

But I don't want it to. I want 'em to be two separate objects. That's what makes the magic happen. Let's select it and  before we make the magic happen, let's change the stroke. The one thing is if you use the width tool,  I love the width tool, okay, grab it  and you kind of like mess around with these. The only trouble with doing this is that if you leave it  as the width tool and then try  and blend it, um, it can sometimes work  but can also cause lots of problems.

So if you are gonna use the width tool first, my advice is  to outline these strokes. So go to stroke, expand appearance, okay? And just make sure they're just shapes  and blend those two together. I'm gonna undo mine and I'm gonna use a cheaper trick  and I'm gonna go to stroke and I'm gonna go down to profile. I'm gonna use this one. Nope, I'm gonna use that one.

Cool. And in terms of the width, not sure yet. Okay, let's crank it up a little bit. Little bit more. Alright, now let's blend them together. Um, we did this in the last video command option D.

And when I say DI mean BI say the wrong letter,  but I click the right letter. Okay? So command option B  or control alt B to blend them together. Let's click them. Let's go to blend options. Let's go to specific steps and let's go to 20  and see how it goes.

Um, I'm not sure what that noise was. It was too many. Let's go to 15. Cool. And you can continue playing around with a stroke width. Okay, depending, you know, it's all still editable that way.

Now where it gets uneditable, I'm gonna rotate mine  around is I wanna put, so basically that's it, right? It's just something a bit more specific we did in this video  than the last one where we just kind of made some cool stuff  and got used to blending modes. And what I'm gonna do is show you how  to build the other parts to that kind  of like acorn flower bud thing. And so one of the tips with it is, is that you need  to really blending mode while it's still on  can cause lots of problems. So what you need to do is kind of expand it, okay? And what I do always, oh, what are you doing over here?

I've already done this video. That's the,  that's the evidence that I've done this video  and I didn't have the microphone turned on  so it was a big blank uh, video. And when I got to this point, I said drag a copy out. That's what I do. Okay? This one's still got the blending mode  so I can come back to it if I need to.

But this one here, I'm gonna rack,  I'm gonna hear you and now object. Uh, blend. We're gonna go to expand. Okay? So now it's just shapes, okay? Remember we can go inside of it now  and move these shapes around, okay?

Uh, it's no longer an active blend. So I want that and I want this other side. So I'm just gonna duplicate it. I'm gonna flip  it up here, okay? And I'm going to line it up kind of how I want it. You can resize it.

You can rotate it. Okay, I'm gonna go something like that. Now what I wanna do is that might be cool go kind  of this um, lattice effect. I want to kind of trim mine along here. Okay? So I want to, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go inside  of this shape, okay?

And I'm gonna go in here and I want this, I'm gonna use  that like a cutting blade. So I'm gonna copy it, come out, I'm going  to paste it in place, okay? Command F or control F to get it back where you got it. I'm gonna change the color so you can see it. Okay? And I'm just gonna use it.

I'm gonna drag it out here  so it's no longer part of this. It's just gonna be used to trim off all this bottom stuff. And I'm gonna grab both of these. Put it over here, okay? And I'm gonna trim off the bottom bits, okay? And any guesses, what I'm gonna use  to trim off the bottom bits, he's gonna use the shape  builder tool 'cause that all he uses, you're totally right.

Okay, I'm gonna select it all. Grab my shape builder tool  shift M, okay, hold down the option. Counter Mac, oh can a PC and kinda like play the harp. I don't know, that's what it feels like. Okay. And cut all those off.

I'm gonna grab my black arrow,  delete this green thing. So click off, click back on, delete that thing. We get this cool kind of like pointy bit  because the um, you know,  the stroke still has this profile applied. I'm gonna have to play around with the weight, okay? To make it kind of fit. You know, it's, it was a bit  thick compared to everything else.

A bit stubby and yeah, that's how I'm gonna do  and build this thing up. Move it along a little bit. Okay? And I'm gonna do the middle bit and the middle bit's gonna  be the exact same as this. So you are dismissed if you wanna move on to the next video,  otherwise let's go up the pencil tool. The end key.

You're sick of the shortcuts. I know you okay,  I got my smoothing on remember? Okay, Fidelity's right up. So it looks kind of good actually that's not very good. And undo both of these. I want something kind of like that.

Remember just like before they have to be separate shapes. This is where a tablet would be good. I don't use one often  because I'm kind of jumping between programs quite a bit. But if I'm ever doing illustration in Illustrator  for any length of time, I'll go  and pull out a tablet, um, out  of my drawer and get it going. Often though I just kind of fudge it  by using the smooth fidelity. Alright, I'm gonna grab the direct selection  tool and just make sure they're lined up.

Remember they can look like they join  but they need to be separate still. Okay? Remember select both of these. Oh those aren't very good shapes. Uh, we'll see how it goes, eh? So I'm gonna use the eyedropper tool to steal the um,  actually steal that one and maybe  lower it down a little bit more.

Okay? Blend them. Command option B. Control option B. And it is totally not working. That's weird, huh?

It's kind of going, oh, I know why  for people that bother hanging around. I know why. Ooh, ooh, ooh this is a really good,  um, let's see if I can fix it. First of all, um, blend, can we reverse front back? No we can't. Cool.

So the reason this is problematic is  because what I did was the line knows which way you drew it. So if I grab my penser tool again, I drew one doing that way  and one doing that way. So that's the beginning of this line,  but that's the beginning of that line. So it's going, ha I gotta go up there. And that's why it's kind of doing this weird flip. Whereas I do the same thing.

Go top top. The two beginnings of the lines are at the top  and those are gonna try and match, select them both. Blending tool. Aha. There you go. Something I didn't really know.

Yeah, there you go. Um, all right, let's get it kind of looking good  and let's, can you flip these? I think you can actually, you can go to this,  select this line here and I can say, Hey Illustrator,  I'm guessing here you can go to Path, I'm pretty sure  and you can say reverse path direction. I was looking at that for a little while. The editor jumped cutted  to me, looked like, I dunno what I was doing. Okay, reverse path direction.

We did it. Look at that. Me and you. All right, so I don't need that one. I need this one. What I'm probably gonna do is make it a lot  bigger because I want to kind of get it to overlap  and I'm gonna trim it off like I did the other one.

So kind of like that. Maybe a bit wider,  not happy with my drawing. Okay. Alright, it's kind of there. Um, now let's go and add the steps. So again, how many steps?

Um, let's go 15. Um, you don't actually have to click, okay,  you've gotta hit tab. So watch this. I go 10 tab, I just tab down to this thing. Basically you've just leave and click it. Oh, you can't click out.

I tab out  and it will show you the preview. I think that's, no, let's get a 15. Awesome. I'm gonna make mine a bit bigger again,  maybe just a bit taller 'cause I want to trim the bottom. Now I could grab a piece of that  and a piece of that and trim it. Or I might just grab my pen and do a manual trim.

As in I'm gonna just create the shape myself by going, yup,  hold down the option Key Mac t Canna PC to break it  and drag out that one there. That'll be good enough. Nobody's gonna know. So again, I'm gonna select all  of these, drag 'em out this way. Okay. And I'm going to grab my shape builder tool, shift m  and go option key down T canna PC  and just drag across them all.

That's not working. Why doesn't it work? I'm gonna give you a second. You pause the video and have a think. All right, pause over. It's because this is still this blending option.

I kind of just told you at the beginning I was like blending  causes problems as in just won't work now. So I need to probably keep an option over it. Okay? You stay over there and you my friend are going to be uh,  under object blend and we're going to expand. Okay? And now I should be able to select it all.

Shift in,  Sorry, shift M hold down my option key PC  and at that trim, trim, trim, trim,  trim and black arrow. Get rid of you. And now I've got that cool kind  of pointy effect thing. Look at us. We did lino cut stuff with cool kind of depth. I dunno.

I remember thinking, look at me, I'm awesome. Although mine doesn't mean to be a flower. Uh, it looks like a walnut or some sort of hard rock seed. But anyway, it's a cool looking seed. So a couple of things is, you know, uh, that the two lines  for a line of cut or this kind of effect needs  to be two separate lines and that when you are starting  to work with them, you need to expand them. Those are the two big takeaways.

Alright my friend, that is it. We made a giant acorn seed thing from a tree. I'm gonna spend some time now making it look really pretty. And then double back and record the intro  with a better looking one. You watch flip back to the beginning, it'll look he cooler. All right, that's it.

I'll see you in the next video.