tutorial: Create and color an eco easter egg in Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial you will learn how to prepare an eco colored egg for easter. Eco for there are no artificial colorants used. I wanted to recreate the look of a traditional polish egg: cooked in onion rinds with wax decors to be scratched off afterwards. In the first part of this tutorial I explain how to create a decor, in the second one how to create a 3D naturaly looking egg.

Part 1: Decor

Step 1: Creating a custom brush

Create a custom brush to be used for the decor. I call it a nail brush. Below you can find the template of mine (you can aslo create this shape combining two ellipses, then go to Pathfinder, choose Add to Shape Area and extract afterwards).

Using the Selection Tool (V) drag your shape to the Brushes panel and choose the settings as below:

Step 2: Creating a wax decor

Draw a straight line segment, apply the nail brush and go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform…

Again go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform… and choose Apply New Effect when the dialog box pops up.

Set the value of horizontal move so that to recreate what you can see below (that may vary depending on the initial size of your line segment).

Draw another vertical line segment of the same length above the left border of the first circle of nails, apply the nail brush, go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform… and again set the value of horizontal move and number of copies so that to recreate what you can see below.

Then drag it down holding alt/option key (to make a copy) and Shift (to drag it vertically) key

You don’t have to be precise as far as the number of copies here (as you can see I was not) since the left and right edges will not be visible.

Step 3: Turning the decor into a symbol

Select your three objects, go to Object menu and expand them. Set stroke color to none and fill color to white. Drag the selection to the Symbols panel and choose Graphic:

Now, it’s time to create an egg.

Part 2: Creating a 3D egg object

Step 4: Creating an egg shape to be revoled

You may use the image below as a template to draw the shape of an egg.

To trace it, make sure the image is in its own layer, double-click the layer in the Layers panel, select Template, and click OK:

Easiest way is to draw an elipse starting in the center of the template egg – hold the alt/option key. Then reshape your ellipse using the direct selection tool (A).

With the selection tool (A) select the right half or your egg and delete it. We are about to create an eco egg which means we only use purely natural colorants – the onion rinds in this case. To obtain the onion rinds effect set the stroke color to R = 165 G = 78 B = 61. Make sure you set fill color to none.

Step 5: From 2D to 3D

Go to Effect > 3D > Revolve. Click More Options to view the complete list of options. On the screenshot below you can see my choice of settings:

Step 6: Mapping Art

Choose the Map Art button and go to Surface 2, choose the eco veggtor symbol and place it on the grey area. Check the preview to properly position the symbol.

Step 7: Adding shade on the egg surface

Duplicate the revolved object (cmd/ctrl+C) and paste it to the front (cmd/ctrl+F). Change the stroke color to white (fill is still none), blending mode to Multiply and Opacity to 60%. Double click the Apperance panel, first go to Map Art and click the Clear All button – that removes art from all surfaces. Press OK than go to More Option, below are my settings:

Step 9: Adding background and shadow underneath the egg

Create an ellipse starting from the bottom peak of your egg. Set it to the back shift+cmd/ctrl+[. Fill the ellipse with a radial black to white gradient and adjust the gradient settings as below:

Set blending mode to Multiply and decrease the Opacity a bit. If you use Illustrator CS 4 you may use a black to transparent gradient instead, then you do not have to change the blending mode.
Now set the backround color, create a rectangle and set it to back shift+cmd/ctrl+[. I set the fill color to R = 157 G = 178 B = 178. The font I used are Skia Regular and Santa Fe LET.

I hope you found this tutorial useful – it’s my first one – some feedback much appreciated! So are tweets/diggs/stumbling… :)