I wanted to get to know Adobe Illustrator so I bought Adobe Illustrator CS2 Classroom in a Book. At a price of AU$80 is was no small investment, but my lack of knowledge was frustrating me.

So this weekend I sat down to create my first serious Illustrator project with my Classroom book beside me. I know the basics of Illustrator but I needed to rapidly get to know Gradient Meshes as I found controlling all the mesh points frustrating. My Classroom book will surely have some nice tips, but to my enormous disappointment it mentions Gradient Meshes only in passing with absolutely no description of how it works or even what it does. I feel like I've wasted my AU$80. If it doesn't teach how to use Gradient Meshes then what does it teach? Hmmm… Gradient Fills — we really need a chapter on that; and Live Trace — Note exactly the most complicated of features.

Now I've done a search on Google and what do I find? A chapter from Adobe Illustrator 10 Classroom in a Book dealing with Gradient Meshes hosted on the Adobe site. Again, why did I spend $80 on this book?

For those who are interested, I finished the project and it looks rather sweet. But the drawing is copied from a photo and I'm waiting on permission from the photographer before I post it publicly.