How to Easily Make Wavy Lines in Illustrator
Illustrator Tips & Tricks
As you may know, Illustrator has a wide range of powerful tools and sometimes finding the best one to achieve a certain result could be a bit confusing if you do not know them all. Of course any method you choose to make your design is 100% valid, but it is good to know that there are some time-saving tools to make complex designs very easily. Today, you will learn how to make wavy lines in Illustrator (that you can use as a background or as a part of your design) drawing nothing more than a simple rectangle.
Step 1
Open Illustrator and make a new file at any size you want. In this case, i will make mine at 1000 x 1500 px in RGB Color Mode with a 72 dpi resolution.
Step 2
Select the Rectangle Tool (M). Click once over your artboard and set the Width to the same lenght of your artboard (1000 in this case), the Height to 30 px and click OK.
Step 3
Align the rectangle to the top center of your artboard by clicking on the "Horizontal Align Center" and "Vertical Align Top" icons in the top toolbar.
Step 4
Go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform. Apply the following settings and click OK.
Step 5
With the rectangle still selected, go to Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Mesh. Set any number of Rows and Columns that you want (i will choose 12 Rows and 5 Columns) and click OK.
Step 6
Select the Direct Selection Tool (A) and select the entire second column of anchor points.
Step 7
Hold the Shift key on your keyboard, skip the third column and select the fourth and sixth columns.
Step 8
While holding Shift on your keyboard, hit the Down Arrow key 5 or 6 times.
Step 9
Using the Direct Selection Tool (A) select any of the available anchor points and freely move them to form your way lines.
Step 10
Once you finish, select the Rectangle Tool (M) and draw a rectangle on top of your waves.
Step 11
Go to Select > All.
Step 12
Go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make.
Step 13
If needed, using the Selection Tool (V) scale and arrange the design over your artboard.
Step 14
Now that you finished making the wavy lines, you can use it as a background and complete your design as you wish, like in the following example.
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