Light the candle

[angelize]

Wow as I'm typing this it's late Saturday night and tomorrow will be Dec 1 where did this year go? Anyway at this time of year candles are always a popular item for graphics and quite easy to draw. But the flame can be tricky to do realistically. So for this challenge I'm providing a candle all in named colours and your task is to light it! Create a realistic flame for the candle and give a brief description of how you did it. That way we can all learn from each other as well as have a bit of fun

[stygg2003]

Here's my effort Francis, the flame and wick are all simple shapes with elliptical fills, I've included the xar file also.
This was the flame in G.P's. tut. a few years ago.

Stygg

[Albacore]

This is the one that I did in 2005 with a few edits to simplify the drawing down. I have removed the all of the Gaussian blurs from around the wick, top of the candle and the flame so you have a better idea of the simple shapes that I have used. Also in the drawing I used a bitmap copy of just the background (rectangle and blend) with a reverse transparency that just softens the blend graduations, an old trick that I learned from Gary's tutorials. I have also removed a few clipping masks as well. Got to hold up my hand here the candle was drawn in Illustrator! as I was working in a shop that time which didn't allow anything else. I took the drawing home to do the majority of the work in Xara as to do all the colour graduations in Illy would have been a nightmare and that includes the background.

[angelize]

Thanks Stygg and Albacore! what great examples to start off And thank you Albacore fore including the .xar file.

[Rik]

Here's my attempt.

[angelize]

Very nicely done Rik and I like that you took advantage of the named colours