Drawing a sphere in any program can be challenging, you’ve got to get the lighting and shadows just right for it to look realistic. Thankfully there is a simple way of achieving it without having to resort to designing with multiple layers.
Start a new document and in the DrawPlus workspace create a simple ellipse, hold down shift while dragging to restrain its height and width and keep it spherical.
Next give the ellipse a gradient fill by clicking on the Fill tool and dragging the cursor from the bottom left to the top right of the ellipse. We’ll then need to add nodes by clicking along the fill line and give them different shades of colour. Add the gradients so it looks like this:
With the Ellipse selected right click and select Filter Effects or click the Filter Effects icon in the Tool Bar and check the Blur checkbox. This is where the magic happens – Set the Opacity to 100, the Blur Type to ‘Radial’ and the intensity to around 45
You’ll be presented with something like this:
All that’s left is to add a shadow under the sphere to give the image depth. Draw out a black filled ellipse, place it behind the sphere and select Filter Effects, blur its edges by checking the Feather checkbox and adjust the blur to suit. You can experiment using different colours or adding transparent ellipses to give the impression the sphere has a glossy finish.
Thanks for writing this post. I’d been struggling with drawing a similar sphere, made up of many layers, until I read how you go about it. Your method is so quick and effective; so thanks for sharing your expertise.
You’re welcome Edward, glad it was of help