How to Make Clouds With Illustrator Shapes
You can draw freehand cloud shapes with Adobe Illustrator's Pen tool if you want to invest the time and care to craft an abundance of bezier curves. You'll soon discover that clouds combine repeated forms with random elements in shapes that challenge your drawing skills. If you prefer to create results quickly without sacrificing the look of your work use Adobe Illustrator's shape-drawing tools and live effects in a modular approach to emulating nature's rain factories.
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Instructions
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Activate Adobe Illustrator's Ellipse tool, nested with the Rectangle tool in the toolbox. Click on an unused area of your artboard to bring up the Ellipse dialog box.
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Enter "250 pt" as the width and "125 pt" as the height. Click on the "OK" button to create your ellipse.
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Open the Object menu, click on its Path submenu and choose "Add Anchor Points." Adobe Illustrator adds additional anchor points evenly spaced between the four points that define the shape of your ellipse.
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Open the Effect menu, click on its "Distort & Transform" submenu and select the "Pucker & Bloat" effect. Positive percentage values bloat shapes outward at their control points. Conversely, negative values pucker objects with spiked extrusions. Enter 10 in the percentage field for a gentle application of the bloat effect. Click on the "Preview" button to see the result, then click on the "OK" button to apply the effect.
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Stack a second effect on top of the first, also from the "Distort & Transform" effect group. Choose "Twist" and set the angle to 20 degrees. Click on the "OK" button in the Twist dialog box to apply the effect.
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Add a third effect to your ellipse. Open the Effect menu, click on its "Warp" submenu and choose "Bulge." Click on the "Horizontal" radio button to identify the effect's axis. Set the bend value and horizontal and vertical distortion amounts to 20 percent. Preview the effect, then click on the "OK" button to apply it.
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Switch to the Selection tool. Hold down the "Alt" key (Windows) or "Option" key (Mac) and drag your effected ellipse to create an overlapping copy. Continue Alt- or Option-dragging until you've created four copies. Click on an unused area of your artboard to deselect your artwork. Once the selection outlines disappear, your collection of ellipses looks like a cloud.
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Open the View menu and choose "Color" to bring up the Color panel if it isn't already visible. If the panel only displays the color ramp from white to black, open the fly-out menu at the top-right corner of the panel and choose "Show Options." Reopen the fly-out menu and set the panel's mode to "Grayscale."
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Marquee around all your cloud shapes with the Selection tool to select them. Click on the "Stroke" swatch in the Color panel, then click on the "None" swatch at the bottom-right end of the panel to remove any stroke applied to your shapes by Illustrator's defaults. Click on the "Fill" swatch to bring it forward, then set the fill for your shapes to 20 percent black.
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Click on an unused area of your artboard to deselect your shapes, then select one that appears behind the others. Set its color to 15 percent black to add depth to your cloud.
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Tips & Warnings
Quickly create variations on your ellipse by opening the Appearance panel, double-clicking on the "Warp: Bulge" effect listing and altering the bend and distortion percentages. Use these variants to build additional clouds with new clusters of shapes.
Experiment with other members of the Warp effect group to create the shapes you duplicate to build your clouds.
For a stylized cloud shape add an outline around your ellipse in a lighter or darker shade.
If you decide to combine your effected shapes into one object using Adobe Illustrator's Pathfinder tools visit the Object menu first and choose "Expand Appearance" to apply your effects permanently. Otherwise your Pathfinder operations may produce unpredictable results.
References
Resources
- The Adobe Illustrator CS5 Wow! Book: Sharon Steuer
- Real World Adobe Illustrator CS5: Mordy Golding
- Adobe Illustrator CS5 Bible: Ted Alspach
- Illustrator CS5 for Windows and Macintosh Visual QuickStart Guide: Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas
- Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium All-in-One for Dummies: Jennifer Smith, et al.
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
