I am also taking "Learning to Swim" with Sara. The work is here.

After a very good introduction to Preferences, Keyboard Shortcuts, Color Picker Options and Swatches, the assignment progressed to the use of Clipping Masks, Transform and Align Palette, Custom Scatter Brush, Blending (color aligned to the path)and Gradients to create the watermelon slice to the left.

I spent a lot of time experimenting with the scatter brush with random settings after creating the seed shape for the brush. I really wanted to make the seeds land in certain places but found it hard to control.

The images to the left are examples of Blends. The first is a blend of an Ellipse and Star over 8 steps, aligned to the path. The second is a blend of arcs over a Specified Distance of 4 pixels. I then used the Rotation we had learned for the clock in Lesson 1 to create the flower. I was surprised to see that there was a change in the center of every other petal caused by the rotation!

To the right is an image created by using custom scatter brushes of clouds, flowers and grass. Again, I spent time experimenting with random scatter percentages on all four sliders in the options for Scatter Brushes. I really enjoy making the brushes!

Below is the assignment which includes some of everything that was part of Lesson 2.

• The buildings and windows were created and then aligned using the Transform/Align/Pathfinder Palette
• The buildings were colored with gradients
• Used a Clipping Mask for the window half circles in the second building
• The stars, text, and bricks are custom made scatter brushes
• The capstones of the buildings are a custom made Art Brush

If the text is difficult to read (and it could be because of the Effects applied) it says "Starry night in the city".