Make your first CSS art

Many people know how to use CSS to style websites, but when it comes to CSS artwork, they get confused on how they are made.

So i thought it might be helpful if i share my humble experience with you, I am going to discuss some important CSS knowledge you will need to have, in order to make your own CSS art and enjoy it as i do, lets start

Useful CSS properties :

1. Gradient

We can declare gradient in both background or background-image properties, it can take as much colors as you want separated by a comma , .

We have two types of gradients:

-Linear Gradients: can be controlled by directions(left,top,right,bottom) or angles.

-Radial Gradients: can be controlled by giving each color a percentage, setting a shape(circle,ellipse).

Great website to generate gradients: cssgradient

2. box-shadow

Give your element one or multiple shadows by separating them with a comma , .

I found that the inset property value is so much useful, it changes the shadow from an outer shadow to an inner shadow, this makes your element looks a little bit real.

Great website to generate box-shadow: cssmatic

3. clip-path

Clip-path is a very useful property when it comes to CSS artwork, this property will make it easy to draw a path that probably will take you so much time to do in a different way.

This helps to draw circle, polygon and paths by specifying which region you want to show.

Great website to generate clip-path: bennettfeely

Make your first CSS art

After we discussed these properties above, you are now ready to make your first CSS art.

This is the one we will make together

This is the HTML :

    <div class="coffee-cont">        <div class="coffee-cup"></div>        <div class="coffee-hand"></div>        <div class="coffee-tasse"></div>    </div>

The first thing we will do is style our coffee container :
we will give it position:relative
and position:absolute to the other elements inside this div (except the coffee-cup div ) so that their positions will depend on their parents position.

    .coffee-cont {        width: 500px;        height: 500px;        margin: 0 auto;        position: relative;    } 

lets style our second div, the coffee cup :
we will use the radial-gradient for the background to make the center a little bit brighter than the sides.

    .coffee-cup {        position: relative;        width: 250px;        height: 190px;        margin: 0 auto;        background: radial-gradient(circle,rgba(208, 208, 208, 1) 5%,rgba(189, 189, 189, 1) 51%);        border-radius: 0 0 150px 150px;        top: 50%;    }

Again a radial-gradient to the element before the coffee-cup to generate our coffee's color. notice that we give it z-index:9 so that it goes over the cup.

    .coffee-cup::before {        content: '';        display: block;        height: 30px;        width: 230px;        position: absolute;        border-radius: 50%;        background: radial-gradient(circle,rgba(132, 102, 76, 1) 5%,rgba(86, 44, 8, 1) 96%);        top: -7px;        left: 10px;        z-index: 9;    }

this code will generate the top of the cup:

    .coffee-cup::after{        content: '';        display: block;        height: 45px;        width: 242px;        position: absolute;        border-radius: 50%;        background: #cccccc;        top: -25px;        left: -1px;        border: 5px solid #e6e6e6;    }

Lets add the coffee-hand div, we will give it z-index:-1, this way it goes behind the cup element

    .coffee-hand{        width: 52px;        height: 32px;        position: absolute;        background: #ffffff;        border-radius: 32px;        transform: rotate(-36deg);        z-index: -1;        border: 15px solid #dbdbdb;        top: 56%;        left: 66%;    }

Now we take care of the element in the bottom, we will use a circular radial-gradient, the center will be brighter.
we need a shadow to add a nice effect to this element, for this we will use the box-shadow property with a darker color.

    .coffee-tasse{        width: 400px;        top: 68%;        left: 10%;        height: 139px;        background: radial-gradient(circle,rgba(69, 69, 69, 1)         13%,rgba(176, 176, 176, 1) 45%,rgba(143, 141, 141, 1)         96%);        border-radius: 50%;        position: absolute;        z-index: -1;        border: 2px solid #f0f0f0;        box-shadow: 1px 3px 0px 1px #323232;    }

I added this ::after selector to generate another blurry shadow which will be displayed at the very bottom of this element.

    .coffee-tasse::after{        content: '';        display: block;        width: 405px;        top: 68%;        border-radius: 50%;        height: 145px;        background: transparent;        box-shadow: 2px 5px 8px 3px #bababa;    }

That's it .
Congratulations on making your first CSS art , now it is your turn to use all the things you have learnt and make something fancier!

Check all the code here : @codepen

If you want to see more of my CSS artwork, check out my twitter, i tweet a lot about CSS there.