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I have used Adobe Illustrator for a long time and have written many tutorials for other websites, but mostly they are all paid tutorials. So i thought of making a free tutorial for everyone in Adobe Illustrator.. So here it is.. How to draw a Coca Cola bottle in Illustrator. Its a huge tutorial with nothing less then 90 images in it. So i have decided in 4 parts and all the parts will publish over next 3 days.

I hope you guys already know how to use a pen tool, as the tutorial won’t be dealing with that. We will talk about Blending and transparency a lot however. The most important aspect of drawing is to break down what you are going to draw. You have to know precisely which order to follow, where to start and where to end. The layer arrangements are equally important as some layers go behind and some come up…

The source .ai file is also available upon request. Send me an email at bobbyrock.sandu@gmail.com and i will send you the .ai file.

Here is the complete series:
Drawing Coca-Cola Bottle in Adobe Illustrator Part 1
Drawing Coca-Cola Bottle in Adobe Illustrator Part 2
Drawing Coca-Cola Bottle in Adobe Illustrator Part 3
Drawing Coca-Cola Bottle in Adobe Illustrator Part 4

This is what we are trying to create:

Well, mostly i will let the images do the talking and will fill in with my observations. But I have made so many images for the tutorial that they will suffice:

I will start drawing by creating the lower part of the bottle. It’s always better to create your own color swatch for drawing as that keeps everything organized. Now let’s draw the shape and fill it with linear gradient with 3 markers. I have provided the colors I have used

This part will be the lower part of the bottle. What I’m trying to do here is merge the two gradients. But in illustrator that won’t be possible. We will be solving this issue with a trick.

So we will copy the path we drew, paste it exactly above the first path. Fill it with black and white gradient, with black pushed to the top… this is going to serve us as our transparency mask.

Now select both the paths, click on the side notch of transparency window and select “Make Opacity Mask”

and this will be the result. And now the two paths are merged with each other. This is the trick..

Lets draw the bottom of the bottle… draw two paths with solid gradients

Go to Object > Blend> Blend Options and change the settings as shown:

And now go to Object > Blend> Make and the two paths will merge

another path across

One dark one at bottom

and two very small paths a at boundaries

Drawing the coke bottle is comprised of drawing a lot abstract shapes, now we will create two more shapes

and blend them as well

draw a solid black path as shown

Now we need carry the darkness to the upper level

But just like before, this gradient wont merge with the lower gradient. To solve this issue, we will use the same trick again. copy the same path, paste it above and fill with black and white gradient and then create the opacity mask

This is how it will look

Now let’s go up, draw the right side of the bottle and use the gradient provides

At the top bring this shape to a close using a solid gradient . Don’t worry about its getting missed with the lower part.

This is how our bottle looks so far

Awlright that’s it for this part.. let’s meet up in the second part of the tutorial.