- [Voiceover] In this movie I'll show you how to take
a couple of blends and paste them into
another path outline in order to create
what's known as a clipping mask.
So, for example let's say I want to
take these two blends that I created in a
previous movie and I want to place them
inside of these trees here in the background.
Because after all, what good are custom gradients
if you can't use them to fill other
shapes, and so here's how that works.
Go ahead and turn that blob slayer back on,
then press the V key to switch to the
black arrow tool, and click on one
of the blends and shift click on the
other one in order to select them.
Then go on to the edit menu and
choose the cut command or you can
press control x or command x on the Mac.
Alright, now we no longer need this
blob's layer so just go ahead and click on
the trash icon in the bottom right corner
of the layers panel in order to get rid of it.
Now click on those trees in the background
and for the moment I'm just going to turn off
this bacon layer so we can see this
compound shape in the background.
And I know it's a compound shape because
I see the words compound shape on the far
left side of the control panel.
Meaning that I can modify each one of these paths
outlines independently of each other.
Just by double clicking on any one of them
to enter the isolation mode and then selecting a
shape and dragging it to a different location.
That's not what I'm looking to do however,
so I'll go ahead and press control z or
command z on a Mac to undo that change,
and then I'll press the escape key in order
to exit the isolation mode and I'll
click again in one of these path outlines
to select the entire compound shape.
Alright, now to place the blends into
this object I'll go ahead and click
on this double arrow icon at the top
of the toolbox in order to switch to
the two column view so that I can see these
draw icons beginning with draw normal
down here at the bottom of the toolbox.
The problem is the one I want to use, draw
inside, is currently dimmed and that's because
I'm working with a compound shape.
And compound shapes aren't all together
compatible with clipping masks.
So what you have to do is go the window
menu and choose the path finder command
in order to bring up the path finder
panel and then click on the expand button.
And by the way if for some reason
that button is dimmed just go ahead
and click off the paths to deselect
them and then click on them again
at which point that button should light up.
Then just go ahead and click on it
in order to convert that dynamic
compound shape to a static path outline.
At which point go ahead and hide the
pathfinder panel and now notice down here
at the bottom of the toolbox that draw inside
is available and if I click on that icon
then I will enter draw inside mode as
indicated by these dash corners.
Alright once you're in the draw inside mode
you can actually use, for example the
rectangle tool to draw inside your path
outline like so and then if I gave it
a different color I'll go ahead and
switch it to, let's say, a dark shade of green
you can see that the rectangle, especially
if I press the V key to switch back to my arrow
tool you can see as I drag it around that It
is clipped inside of the trees.
That's not what I want however,
so I'll just press the backspace
key or the delete key on the Mac to
get rid of that rectangle and then
I'll retrieve those objects that I cut to
the clipboard by going up to the edit
menu and choosing paste and place or you can
press the keyboard shortcut control+shift+v or
command+shift+v on the Mac and that goes ahead
and pastes the blends into the trees like so.
After which I will exit the draw inside mode
by clicking on the draw normal icon
or if you're a big fan of keyboard shortcuts
you could press shift+d in order to
cycle through these various modes.
But in any event you do want to return to the
draw normal mode or else you risk the chance of
continuing to draw inside the trees.
Alright now I'll press control+shift+a or
command+shift+a on a Mac in order to deselect
my artwork and I'll turn the bacon and the
face layers back on so that we can see the
bird in the context of those custom gradients.
And that friends is how you create a clipping
mask specifically by cutting a couple of custom
gradient blends and pasting them inside the
boundaries of a static path outline
here inside Illustrator.