Creating a Curvy Gradient Line

This tip is not to be confused with the How to Blend Around a Curve tip in the archive. This is a totally different kind of tip that was brought to attention by a regular contributor to the site, Judy Arndt. Basically, this describes how to create curvy gradient lines using blends, and don't look linear like most gradients do.

Version: 7 and above

Tip idea provided by: Judy Arndt
Content written by Ian Kelleigh

For this example, I'm going to use an extremely curvy line to better illustrate the method described below. You probably know by now how to Expand a stroke in order to fill a line with color.

The problem encountered when giving an Expanded Stroke a gradient fill, is that the gradient is too linear. Like the example above, it doesn't work too well when the curve starts to show darker colors when it gets higher (like the area circled). Below I explain how to get better results using Blends.

1) First make sure that your document measurement is set to Points for easier editing later. Start by drawing a line. Really curvy lines work better for this kind of effect. Above I created a 6 pt. line.

2) Next, draw a constrained circle (when drawing, hold the Shift key down). In the Object Inspector palette, change the width and height of the circle to match the weight of the line. Here I change it to 6 pt. Example zoomed in slightly.

3) Now Clone the circle as many times as you want to have colors in the final Gradient. Then color them as appropriate, and remove the lines. Above I want 4 different steps in the Gradient, the last being white (outline for clarity only).

4) Select all the circles and Blend them together. Don't worry about the amount of steps for now.

5) Now select both the Blend and the curvy line. Now apply the Modify -> Combine -> Join Blend to Path operation.

6) You may see something like above. The line should be replaced by the Blend you created. If you see a lot of gaps like above, then increase the Number of steps in the Blend via the Object Inspector palette.

7) In the above example, I changed the number of steps to 256, the most you really want to have for an effect like this. This ensures that the line won't be "bumpy" when printed or rasterized.

Now for even more fun, sub-select a circle in the Blend and Scale it. Now it's a variable width gradient stroke (try saying that 5 times really fast).

And yet even more fun. Above I used two circles with gradient fills. Since FreeHand 7-9 can blend gradient fills it works well. It created a very interesting effect once combined with the line in the lower example.

This is a fantastic way to get better gradient filled lines than with the Expand Stroke method. This method isn't perfect however, as it is pretty difficult to change the placement of the colors in the Blend without messing it up.