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, let’s 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 parent’s position.

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

let’s 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; } 

Let’s 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. 😊