Hello everyone. I’m glad you could join us on this fantastic day. I thought today I would show you how to make a nice cheerful sun to live with the clouds we made in the last tutorial.

Step 1:
Let’s start with our standard 600px by 600px Illustrator canvas. Like I said last time, you can really set your canvas to whatever size you like; but if you use a different sized canvas, the numbers I use throughout the day may not work as well for you as they do for me.

Step 2:
Now we’re just going to drop in a nice little circle using the Ellipse tool (l). I put this right in the center of my canvas, but you can put it wherever you like. You know what, it doesn’t even need to be a circle. You can put down an oval if you want. Always remember, this is your sun, so have fun with it.

Step 3:
Next you’re going to make larger circle around your first circle. The way I do this is by selecting my first circle, holding down ALT, and hitting either the LEFT key to duplicate my shape. Then I hit the RIGHT key to move it right back over top of the first circle, and then scale it out and make it bigger. Once it’s a size I like, then I hit CTRL + SHIFT + [ to send the big circle back behind our little circle.

Remember now, this is just the way I like to do it. If you have a different way, use it. And let me know, we’re all learning together here.

Step 4:
Ok. Now that your circles are happy together, make sure your outer circle is selected, and give it a nice Zig Zag effect (Effect>Distort & Transform>Zig Zag).

I set the size to 3%, clicked the relative circle, and gave it 7 ridges per segment. I picked relative so that no matter what size we make our sun in the end, the size of the halo will stay the same. I also make sure to set the points to corner to give good definition to my sun’s halo. Maybe you want more points, or less, or a smooth wavy halo. It’s your world, let your imagination run wild.

Step 5:
Next we’re going to set a light yellow to yellow radial gradient on the inner circle. Since this is a cheerful sun, I’m making sure the face of our sun has a nice bright gradient. Now we’ll use the gradient tool (g) to pull the gradient down from the upper right part of the sun’s face and give a hint of depth.

Step 6:
We’re going to go crazy now. Let’s select our outer halo and set a yellow to orange radial gradient. Grab the gradient tool (g) and have some fun with the size and position of your gradient.

Step 7:
To finish up, I used the sky and some of our cloud friends from the last tutorial to give a home to our new sun. I took the stroke off all these guys to make everything look much softer. All of the clouds have a little drop shadow on them, just like the last time, so they look like they’re just floating right along without a care.

Now I think we’re going to call this one done. I hope you had a fun time today, I know I did. From all of us at ClickPopMedia, have fun with Illustrator, and God bless you.