General Chat / Gradient Meshes

I am a graphic designer, so I use Adobe Illustrator every day, but I have never had the need to use the gradient mesh tool. Today, work was slow, so I experimented a bit and drew a picture of my niece kissing her dog. There are some obvious areas that need to be corrected, but I was impressed with what resulted in just a few hours:

That's pretty nice...I'd like to handle well Graphic Design...

Dude, that is too ironic

whoa, that looks pretty cool man...
-JDP

Dude, that is too ironic

What's ironic? I'm confused.

I think he means about the "man's best friend" thing?
I think that looks really cool, man.

yes i do, but not for most things. The fact that they can't start on the edges of shapes limits their possibilities. Also, they tend to look unrealistic, as most things have more texture than just a smooth gradient.... still, you can do fun things with backgrounds and such with them.

I haven't done much with meshes... hmm.