Water drops can be super handy especially when you have them available as vector shapes. This tutorial was created to show you how easy it can be to create a water drop in Adobe illustrator.
Step 1
Open a new document in Adobe illustrator CC. Create a rectangle (Rectangle Tool, shortcut M) with a color of your choice. I decided to stick to blue.
Step 2
Select the Ellipse Tool (L) and draw a circle (Hold Shift). Set the stroke to none and the fill to black.
In order to make if more drop like looking, let’s transform the circle. Go to Effect – Distort & Transform and choose Roughen. Select for Points, Smooth and in Options set the Size to 12%. Set the Details to 0.
With the ellipse selected, got to the Transparency Palette and set it to multiply and 60% Opacity.
Step 3
Create another ellipse like shape (you can make a copy of the one previously created and make it smaller with the Transform tool E). Set the fill color to black, the transparency to Multiply and Opacity to 0%.
Step 4
Now select both shapes, the bigger ellipse and the smaller ellipse. Press Ctlr/Command and Alt/Option + B to create a blend. You can also go to Object > Blend > Make. After you have done this, open the Blend Options Palette (Object > Blend > Blend Options) and set the Spacing to Specified Steps of 25.
Step 5
Create another ellipse a bit smaller than he last and fill it with white.
Set the Transparency to Normal and the Opacity to 0%.
Step 6
Create yet another circle/ellipse much smaller filled with white. This will be the highlight point. Set the Transparency to Normal and the Opacity to 60%.
Select both shapes and create another blend with Specified Steps 25 (see Step 4).
Step 7
We want to add another highlight to your water drop for more realistic look. Create another circle and Roughen it via the Effect Options (see Step1). Fill it with white. Make sure the shape overlapped the original shape in size.
Set the Opacity to 0%.
Create another small ellipse filled with white and set the Opacity to 50%.
Select both shapes again and apply a blend with Specified Steps of 25.
Step 8
Since we just created another blend with Opacity, the shape overlaps the original and makes it look kind of muddy.
In order to fix that, we can apply an Opacity Mask. To make an Opacity Mask, create a shape that will mask the blended shape. I chose to make a copy of the shape created in Step 3. Make sure it is just a shape filled with white and not a blended shape.
Select the blended shape from Step 7 and the shape that will serve as an opacity Mask and go to the Transparency Palette. Click on the small arrow on the op right and from the drop down menu select “Make Opacity Mask”.
The Opacity Mask now hides the bottom part of the blended shape and gives us a nice sharp edge.
Final Step
Now we have created a nice water drop. Since we setup the shapes with Black and White fills only and set Opacities, we can place the water drop on anything and the water drop will look transparent showing the image beneath. Below are some examples how the water drops can be used.
I hope you enjoyed this small little Tip on Vectortwist.
Examples of water drops applied to image or illustration
