Creating gradient mesh object, object turns into gradient mesh object w/ white fill

Question

Creating gradient mesh object, object turns into a gradient mesh object w/ white fill automatically.
I would like this to be a stroke object as I cannot see the picture that I am trying to recreate.
Illustrator is not allowing me to change the white fill into a stroke after I create the gradient mesh object.
Here is the image when I try to create the gradient mesh object, I do not have the white fill option chosen and the image still
becomes a white fill gradient mesh object.
Please can anyone help??
Thank you.

Answer 1

Sure. A gradient mesh won't have strokes. It will always have fills. If you want no fill, you need to set the opacity of a single mesh point to 0%. But you actually don't want to do that for the complete grid, because it will be very time consuming to adjust this back to 100 percent for every single meshpoint when coloring them.
Instead the usual setup is with the two layers. This allows you to see the gridlines and the template. Then you first adjust the grid (color doesn't matter for this). Then you pick up the colors from the template to color the single mesh points. From time to time you switch into preview to admire your work.