| Decorating Easter Eggs in Illustrator CS | |
(If you arrived at this page from a search, you can start the tutorial on page one.)
Using a Clipping Mask
Sometimes the brush stroke will extend past the sides of the egg, and when that happens we can use a clipping mask to hide the parts of the stroke that are hanging over the edge of the egg.
Choose the ellipse tool and make another ellipse with no fill and a stroke color you can see against the egg color. Move this egg on top of the colored egg. Without deselecting the outline egg, hold the shift key and click on the colored egg. Since the top egg is only an outline, you can click in the center of it to select the bottom egg. In the Align palette, click the Align Horizontal Centers button and the Align Vertical Centers button to align the two eggs.
Drag the selection tool around both eggs and the brush strokes so that all pieces are selected and go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make. The clipping mask will hide the brush strokes that were extending over the edge of the egg. Now you can rotate this egg as well.
Using Symbols
As well as brushes, you can also use Symbols to decorate your eggs. There are a few sets that come with Illustrator and you can download many sets free from the Adobe Studio. Open the Symbols palette (Window > Symbols) and use the palette options menu to load the set you wish to use. Drag the symbol from the palette to the egg. This one uses the hibiscus symbol from the Nature Symbols and text. Variation: On the egg next to it, I went a step farther and filled the sections with a gradient. If you wish, draw your own designs to use.
For those who were wondering about the chicken:
©2005 Sara Froehlich
