sick of water drops yet ?

[Jodi Frye]

Got to thinkin' about using a black and white gradient mesh as the clipping mask over a white drop shape...I know a tutorial was posted a while back but I couldn't find it so gave myself a whirl at it. Added inner glows and a slight drop shadow and made a queer background for it all...t'was a fun project

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1B3O1HF8Zvfscw46al6g0yqbXNRU_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1B3O1HF8Zvfscw46al6g0yqbXNRU)

[Husker]

Those came out great!

[Xoote]

i like them. Good work

[Geert]

Looks very realistic. Good work, Jodi! If you come to think of the tutorial URL, please share.

[Jodi Frye]

Thanks for the feedback people !

Geert, I never found the tutorial...just did it on my own. Not too tough if you are familiar with the mesh tool. I don't use it much but tried it out here. The first thing to do is make a medium-darkish background on the bottom layer and lock it. Then create a new layer and make a drop shape and fill it with white. Duplicate the layer ( copy and paste on top) then select the mesh tool and click in the middle, fill that highlighted node with black. Select both objects ( original drop shape and mesh shape ) and go to the transparency palette and from drop down menu select the ' make opacity mask ' . This will give you a starting point for your drop. Add mesh lines and fill with black white and grey tones. This is what my mesh looked like for the larger drop...of course I have released the clipping mask just to show here what the mesh looked like. On the original layer I added an inner glow, multiply blend mode in a dark color that resembles the background color used. Added a drop shadow afterwards ( uncheck ' clip ' to see it ).

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1kPtkYV8Kc6KzxnAfhZBeeL3vq_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1kPtkYV8Kc6KzxnAfhZBeeL3vq)

[Geert]

I gave it a shot. Actually it was not that hard. Playing around with the mesh mostly. Still think my drop is tad too white in the middle, though.

Thanks for the explanation, Jodi. Oh, and the leaf background comes from http://www.flickr.com/photos/24471966@N04/2568262523/in/pool-bittbox.

[Jodi Frye]

Geert, looks pretty good to me...just add another mesh line and add more black so that the white reflection isn't so prominent...you'll see in my screenshot that the top is squeezed a bit to give it a closer edge between black and white

[Husker]

You can also try the blend method I show in this tutorial (http://www.vectorgeek.com/artwork/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=589&g2_serialNumber=2).