Making a cute cloud shape

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GarryP

Here's a workflow showing how you can easily make a cute little cloud shape that can be useful in all sorts of projects.

The basic cloud shape


1. Draw four circles and a rectangle as shown in figure 1 (the numbers in the figure are the diameters of the circles that I used but you can use your own depending on what you want).
2. Select one of the shapes and shift-select another that touches it and choose menu "Item -> Path Tools -> Path Operations...".
3. Make sure you've got "Unites the shapes" selected and OK the dialog.
4. Repeat operations 2 and 3 until all of the shapes are "joined" - see figure 2.
5. With the cloud shape selected, choose menu "Item -> Multiple Duplicate..." and OK the dialog with no changes. This creates a duplicate right on top of the original.

The colouring

Now you'll need to set-up some new colours for your cloud.
I've used: Light Blue - CMYK 50%,0,0,0 and Very Light Blue - CMYK 25%,0,0,0.

1. Once you've got your colours, select the cloud (actually you're selecting the top one).
2. Set the line width to 3pt using the Properties palette.
3. Choose menu "Item -> Path Tools -> Create Path from Stroke".
4. Set the outline colour of the shape to "None" (because the new shape will have inherited the outline colour of its previous incarnation).
5. Set the fill type to be "Vertical Gradient" and set the colour of the left tab stop to be White and the right to Light Blue.
6. Cmd+select (or whatever keys you use on your system) on the shape to select the shape behind it.
7. Set the outline colour to "None" and make the fill a "Vertical Gradient" with the left tab of Light Blue and the right of Very Light Blue.

You should now have your cute little cloud shape - figure 3.

Put it on a darker blue background to see the full effect - figure 4.

Why not put the cloud in your Scrapbook for use whenever you need it?

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