By the way Chris, aren’t you going to share your awesome coloring style and write a couple of tutorials?

The points and handles used to create the meshes seem to have less friction, for lack of a better term. When you’re using the pen tool, if you grab a handle to adjust a curve, the “twist” seems to travel at a fairly regulated pace, whereas I’ve noticed it seems to curve and almost flail at times when using the mesh. Also, I barely even think about selecting individual points when I’m using the pen tool, but they seem to be more difficult targets when using the mesh. I may not be using the proper words to express the difference, but there’s definitely a palpable — if minor — difference between the mechanics of the normal drawing points and the mesh points. It’s just enough to put me off from using it for most applications. Basically, for me, it would add unnecessary time to my process because I’m able to achieve what I want much faster using feathered objects and clipping masks. Might not be the purest or most elegant technique, but it’s very quick, easy to edit, and it produces a certain look that works well with my style. That said, I really respect you for what you’re able to do with the mesh.

@David

Thanks, man! Sad to hear that your teacher “fumbles” through what is most basic and necessary part of vector drawing. Hopefully you’ll get something from the class.

Its a interesting technic which I look forward too trying to use! Just like Rype I bought a Wacom a few months ago and I haven’t completely got my head wrapped around it, when I use it in Illustrator – especially the settings.

Meshes takes all of one attention, no doubt about it! But Im somewhat puzzled with you saying that it doesn’t work like pen tool?

@Esben – I agree — textures are certainly the most difficult element of vector illustration. I’m not a big fan of the often overly-plastic looking drawings that often result from a vector approach, so I tend to limit harsh, bright highlights to items that need to look shiny and/or reflective. Also, I’ve found that keeping the textural elements simple helps a lot when you’re creating vector textures. For instance, when I create a speckled scatter-brush texture, I usually start with a simple, sloppy circle. I like to make the elements a bit imperfect to give them a more organic quality. So a sloppy circle, rotation set to randomly cover the whole range, subtly varying the scatter, spacing, and size, either at random or in association with the Wacom pen’s pressure, seems to work really well. For me and my approach, I try to keep copy-and-pasting and duplicated items to a minimum to give it more of a drawn-by-hand feel.

Also, I really didn’t mean to disparage the gradient mesh feature/tool. People do incredible work with it and I do use it on occasion, but it’s mainly the way the points and handles operate that keeps me away from it. I wish the mechanics of the mesh’s vector controls operated in a way more akin to the pen tool. I tend to break images down into objects and I like being able to layer those objects and move them freely, which is another reason meshes don’t work as well with my approach. I think they’re one of the best and most powerful features in Illustrator, they’re just not for me.