How to Make Vector Swirls in Illustrator

Swirled shapes occur all around in natural and manufactured objects.

Adobe Illustrator's bezier curves lend themselves easily to the creation of elaborate swooping shapes. Although you can draw freehand swirled objects with the Pen tool and finesse your shapes by editing anchor points, you also can accomplish the task of drawing swirls with the output from an Illustrator shape-drawing tool and the application of a reshaping effect. This procedure offers two advantages: It's quick to apply and can be edited at any time to alter its parameters.

Instructions

1. Click the Star tool from the Adobe Illustrator toolbox. Click and drag to draw a star in your current document using the default Star tool settings. Click once to bring up the Star dialog box, choose radius settings and select the number of points for your object. Radius 1 establishes the size at the tips of your star's outer points, while radius 2 sets the size at its interior points. Click on the "OK" button to create your star if you use the Star dialog box to draw it by the numbers.

2. Select color options for fill and stroke. Double-click on the "Fill" swatch in the Adobe Illustrator toolbox to bring up the Color Picker and choose a fill for your star. Double-click on the "Stroke" swatch to set its color value.

3. Choose "Twist" from the Distort & Transform fly-out menu of the Effect menu. Set the angle to 180 degrees or higher and click on the "OK" button to apply your effect. Adobe Illustrator distorts your star into an interesting swirl pattern.

4. Edit your effect at any time in the Appearance panel to increase or decrease the distortion. Adobe Illustrator's effects remain live and infinitely editable.

Tips & Warnings

• Apply multiple instances of the Twist effect to distort your star object more.

• Use your swirl as a mask to reveal type or other graphics.

• The Twist effect can produce interesting effects on virtually any shape, but the star's complex geometry gives it a good starting point.

• Avoid using these swirls to create vinyl graphics from a computer-controlled cutter. Their thin shapes and sharp points won't cut well.

References

• Adobe: Using Adobe Illustrator CS5
• "The Adobe Illustrator CS5 Wow! Book"; Sharon Steuer; 2010
• "Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium All-in-One for Dummies"; Jennifer Smith, et al.; 2010
• "Illustrator CS5 for Windows and Macintosh Visual QuickStart Guide"; Elaine Weinmann, et al.; 2011