🚀 go-pugleaf

      will the blend tool be able to "blend" a gradient color, or does it only
      work with solid hues?




That was one of my points: The two paths in the example shown have two different linear grad fills. Different colors; different directions.

      I guess having the same amount and placement of points for both paths
      is necessary




It's not always necessary, but it's always less "ambiguous" for the program doing the blending to "understand." It's simple to see what's going on:

"Program, create additional paths between these two. Interpoloate anchorPoint 1 in path A toward anchorPoint 1 in path B. Interpoloate anchorPoint 2 in path A toward anchorPoint 2 in path B." Etc.

If there are five points in path A and only four in path B, you're saying "Program, interpolate point 5A toward....um....well, take your best shot."

So remove all doubt. Clone the first path, move its points around. You can also select two corresponding anchorpoints in the paths before invoking the Blend, to explicitly set the "start points" for the two paths.

      I tried duplicating the original path, then just reducing the size of
      the newly created path....expecting it to fit....It doesn't work that
      way.




Of course it doesn't. That's just simple geometry. Simply scaling a copy of an irregular shape about its center does not result in parallel edges. To understand this, draw two rectangles, but make only one of them a square. Then try your scaling idea. The distance between the two squares will be uniform all the way 'round; but the short sides of the other rectangles will be more widely spaced than the long sides.

Programs like Illustrator have automatic "offset" commands to create parallel paths of irregular objects. Most (not Illustrator) have "contour" commands to generate a user-defined series of parallels, with adjustable spacing. But those features almost always result in the several paths having different numbers of points.

So just clone the first path, judiciously move a few anchors and handles. The example shown took about 8 minutes, all told.

I know it seems difficult at first. But trust me; it's a very basic and common technique in vector drawing. Getting comfortable with it is necessary and doesn't take long.

JET