Fireworks Tutorial

Firework illustration can quickly spice up a boring greeting card, and who would not want to do exactly that?! In this tutorial I will show you how to create decent looking fireworks in Illustrator. Get the champagne ready for the show!

1. The Basics:

As a start we should create a background for the fireworks, what else could it be than a plain black one? Let’s draw a black rectangle and lock this layer. Take a new layer from the bottom right corner of the Layer panel and start drawing the basic fireworks pattern in this new layer. You can get helping guides to draw this pattern (turn Rulers ON by pressing Ctrl/Command + R OR View: Show Rulers and you can drag the guides from these rulers as shown in the picture below and use the intersection point of these guides as the center point of the Firework).

While drawing this firework pattern just make sure that each of your line is a separate one.

2. Applying Brush:

Make a new brush to apply to these lines of our firework pattern. Draw a very thin oval shape. Take the Fill color white and the Stroke should be OFF.

We need to convert this oval shape into a brush. Open the Brushes window from Window menu OR press F5. While the oval shape is selected, press the new Brush button in the right bottom corner of the Brushes window.

Select ‘New Art Brush’ in the ‘New Brush’ window that opens up and press OK.

Let’s apply our newly created brush to our fireworks. Select the drawing and click on the newly created brush in the Brushes window. Make the stroke 0.5 so the firework lines would not look too bulky. Here is how it should look like after applying the brush.

3. Converting the Firework into Shape:

We will make our fireworks colorful. For this we'll need to convert the firework lines in to shapes. While the whole fireworks is selected, go to Object menu and select ‘Flatten Transparency’.

Keep the options in the ‘Flatten Transparency’ window as default, and then press OK. You will notice that all the lines of Fireworks are converted into shapes.

4. Filling with Colors:

Keep all these shape selected and open the gradient panel from Window menu (OR press Ctrl/Command + F9). In the Gradient panel take some nice shades of blue and keep the Type as Radial. Apply the gradient to the Firework from center to outward direction.

5. Last bits:

Starting to take shape! Let’s make it look nicer by adding glow to it. Select the fireworks again and from the Effects menu, select Outer Glow under Stylize sub menu.

In the Outer Glow window set the parameters as shown in the picture below to obtain a nice glow around the fireworks. You should change the colour of the glow to blue from the Outer Glow window.

6. Making Copies:

The glow should look quite nice. Now let’s make few more fireworks. Make a copy of the firework and scale it down a bit and change all the colors to some other colors.

We'll need to change the color of the glow as well. For this you need to open Appearance window from Window menu (OR press Shift + F6). In Appearance window, double click on Outer Glow. In the Outer Glow window you can change the color of the Glow.

Alright! Now make a few more copies of the fireworks with different colors in the similar way. Just take a look below how I made it.

Ladies and Gents, it's  time to open the champagne!