Leah Levitan

I wanted to create a ribbon that was bent in the middle and didn’t manage to find a tutorial online that could teach me how to do it in Adobe Illustrator CS3. I will detail how i completed my task. There are probably other ways of doing this, but this is what i did.

To start with i create a line using the line segment tool.

Then i selected the white arrow (Direct Selection Tool) and selected the node at one end of the line.

Then select ‘convert selected anchor points to smooth’, this will add handles so that you can make the curve bigger or smaller. To have more control over the curve i then added another anchor point to the line by selecting the pen tool and clicking on the path.

Select the white arrow (Direct Selection Tool) to grab the handles and move the anchor points until you are satisfied with the curve produced.

Select the line created, and copy and paste it so that you have two lines exactly the same, move the second line around until it is below the first line, with a gap that you require for the width of your ribbon.

Now that there are two lines representing the top and bottom of the ribbon it is time to join them together with a few vertical lines.

Select all of the paths that have been created so far, copy the lines and then paste them to produce a duplicate set of lines. With the duplicate set of lines all selected rotate them and move them to join up with the first set of lines (as seen below).The lines may not meet exactly.

Select the two vertical lines in the middle and delete them.

Once the lines have been removed you will see that there is a small gap where the lines do not meet. Select the white arrow (Direct Selection Tool) and click on one of the lines. Click and hold the end anchor and drag it on top of the anchor of the line that you wish to join together.

We now need to remove the lines that are being over lapped.

Select the bottom path on the left-hand side of the ribbon with the white arrow selected. The select the pen tool and add an anchor too the point where the top and the bottom lines intersect and click on the ‘cut path at selected anchor points’. This will cut the path but not change the look and feel of the curve.

Do the same with the bottom line on the other side of the ribbon.

With the white arrow selected grab the end anchor point and move it so that it is no-longer being over lapped. The handles of the curves that have been moved will need to be altered to make the lines similar to the top line of the ribbon.

Now to add some colour and depth to the ribbon.

Select all of the lines on the left side of the ribbon and select the ‘Live paint bucket’ tool, change the fill to gradient and choose ‘linear gradient’ in the path menu at the top. The click inside the lines selected (if an error appears then there is a gap in the selected lines or one of the lines have not been selected) to apply the gradient.

Then select all of the lines in the middle of the ribbon and go to object > live paint > merge so that we can fill the selection. Use the ‘Live paint bucket’ tool to fill the middle section with the gradient.

Use the same technique to fill the final section.

I then selected everything and removed the black lines.

I didn’t like the gradient colours that were present so i selected everything again and then changed the gradient colours the gradient window and also toggelled the colours so that some would appear from longer than others. This then produced a red ribbon.