Applying Texture in Illustrator Using Clipping and Transparency Masks

1. Intro: Hi, I'm Joe. See, A few years ago, I wanted to learn Adobe Illustrator and at that time, flat vector graphics were really popular. And then I blinked and everybody was painting. We're using watercolor and wash and just adding this really beautiful texture element in their work that I couldn't achieve an illustrator. I didn't think I could achieve an illustrator. And so I made it my mission to figure out how to add some of that texture to my work so that I could continue using Illustrator because I really like it. And that's what this mini course is about is about how to add and apply texture to your work and illustrator using clipping and transparency mess. Give it That campaign is look but still using my favorite illustrator. So I hope that you enjoy the class and I can't wait to see what you make 2. Class Project: Now, let's talk about our class project. I'd like you to create our work for a cell phone case since supplies that you will need. Obviously, Adobe Illustrator. Whatever version you are using should be fine. I use C c. You will also need some vector textures. I've posted leaks for the textures that I use in this video, but you're welcome to use whatever textures you already have. And then, lastly, whatever you used to create art an illustrator, this course doesn't actually go over how to create art. And illustrator. It assumes that you already know that piece. So we will be starting from that point with your art already uploaded into a document. Okay, let's get started. 3. Clipping Masks: Hi, friends. Welcome to our first lesson of our many course applying texture and illustrator using slipping and transparency vests. In this lesson, we're gonna learn about clipping nests and how to apply some of that texture that we've been talking about. See, you can see I have my artwork here. I have my girl. She's grouped together. All the objects are grouped together. And then I also have a copy of just her shirt, and we're gonna be working with just her shirt right now to show you how to apply a clipping mask. So I'm gonna come over here to my subtle grunge textures document that I got off of creative market. I'll post a link for this if you're interested in purchasing the same set. But this is one of my favorites. I like it just because it's it is subtle. So I'm gonna come over here and grab one of the ISS by hitting command, see, and then coming back to my document and hitting command V to paste, having a resize our texture here and rotate it using our on my keyboard and then give it a different color. So one place it on top of the shirt and just kind of working out resize it to something I like. Okay, so that looks good. All right, to apply. Clipping mask. I am going. Teoh, grab the shirt. Hit command. See to copy in command F to paste in front and send. I can see over here in my layers panel. I have two shirts, one in front of the other, but I need to move the shirt that I just copied all the way to the front. So I'm gonna do that by hitting shift command, right bracket. And that's gonna bring the copied shirt up to the front so you can see I have shirt, groans, shirt. You can also do this by right clicking, arrange, bring to front. If you would like to do it that way, that's fine. Okay, so now that we have that done, I'm gonna select everything just by dragging my selection tool across. And so everything is selected, and then I'm going to hit command seventh, and this is going to create a clipping mask. So all of those little bits of grunge that were on the outside before you can now no longer see they're still there because that's how clipping mask works. If I go into isolation mode and I click on my grunge here, oh, too far, we'll try that again. If I go into isolation mode and I click on my grunge, I can actually move it around. I haven't lost any of those bits. Um, so I can still move it within my document. But then when I click out of isolation, but you still can't see any of that extra those extra bits outside my object. So that is one way to use a clipping mask, um, to apply some texture. And now I'm gonna use the trim tool because let's say I'm super happy with how this looks, OK? I'm not ever gonna need to go into isolation mode and move this grunge around. This is where I want it to stay. How I do that is I select my object here, my clipping mask, and then I'm gonna come over to my Pathfinder and hit trim. And so now it's just in object. Okay, The little bits that were on the outside before are no longer there. They don't exist anymore because we trimmed them off so you can't go in and move like we did before. Okay? And so you can actually see if I zoom in really, really far in. You can see this is this little bit of grunge was also hanging off before, but now it's trimmed exactly the same path as the shirt waas. Okay, so that's using a clipping mask and the trim tool. So you may be thinking right now. Hey, Okay, that's really cool. But I have this group of objects over here that I want to apply texture to Justus a whole. So I'm gonna bring my girl over here, and I'm gonna show you what happens when you do it this way. So she's grouped together, right? I'm all these individual objects that make up who she is. So come over here, grab my texture like I did before, pasted into my document. We'll re size and rotate and do all that good stuff to get it high once. So now I'll see. We've got some texture going on. We'll move it up into her hair too. And that texture going across her shirt, her face or hair shorts, all of that. So if we try to apply the same method to our group of objects. I'll show you what happens. So I clicked my girl command C command F to paste in front and then bring it all the way to the front by a shift command right bracket. And then I'm gonna select everything and hit command seven to make a clipping mask. And this morning pops up. It says it's too complex and it doesn't want to do it. And that's because and I'll show you what happens if you click. Yes. Oh, she's gone. Okay, so that is because Illustrator does not do clipping masks to group objects. Okay, It only wants to do it to one specific shape. So I'll show you how to apply texture to a set of group objects using a transparency mask in the next video. 4. Transparency Masks Pt. 1: Welcome back, guys. So in the last lesson, you learn that you can apply clipping mask to a single object or shape, but not to a group of shapes. So I want to show you in this video how you can apply some of that texture to a group of objects. So you can see I have my grungy bits, my texture. And then I have my group girl and plant. So I'm gonna bring my grunge over here on top of my group and kind of just play around, get it where I think I want it on. Then I'm actually going to hit command Tex to cut. And don't worry, it'll come back. So now I'm gonna click on my girl here, and I'm gonna come over here to my transparency window and you can see that the girl pops up in this little window and I'm gonna hit, make mask. Oh, no, She's gone. Don't freak out, though. Hit clip and hit invert mask. And so she's back. All is well. And now I'm gonna click on this other window right here. And what this does is it means that we're gonna be working within the group objects. So everything else. If there were other stuff out here on the art board, we couldn't mess with it because we're on Lee working within this group. Object. So now I'm gonna hit command V to paste my grunge back, and I can move it around and get it back where where I want it. And then all I have to do is click outside the banding books. And now, if I try to move anything I can't because I'm still working with inside inside the initial group. So I'm gonna click back over here on my girls image, and now I can work within the rest of the document and I could move it over, and you can see what happened. So what that did what the transparency mask did in that situation is actually subtract all the little grungy bits from the initial image. Okay, so whatever background color you have is what will show through, So show you what that looks like so you can see just drew a rectangle, and that's you know, whatever color you have will be whatever color shows through in the background. So that's great. That's one way to apply texture to a group of objects. Get rid of that. But I was wanting to create one of those clear phone cases, and I wanted to apply texture to my group of objects. But I didn't want it to be showing through as clear, right. I wanted it. I wanted the grungy bits toe have a color. So I'm gonna show you how I did that to come back over here to my transparency window, make sure that selected, and I'm actually released the mask to get it back to the way it was before. I'm gonna come over here to my group object, and I'm actually going to hit command seat a copy and then command be to paste in the back so you can see over here I have to two groups or two images here, one of the front one of the back, and then the grunge on top of that. So with this selected, I am gonna come over. I mean, the very back group selected. I'm gonna come over to my Pathfinder tool and hit him hit, unite, and it's gonna make it a compound past, which then makes it. I'll show you if I moved over here. It made it all one color. Okay, But it's directly behind my initial image. You can't even see it. So selecting that back image, I'll make it whatever color I want to make it. I'm gonna make it that peachy color, and then we're gonna go about the process the same way as we did a second ago. So selecting my grunge hitting Command X selecting the top group. So my colored group with my I mean my multicolored group come over to my transparency window hit make mask and now you can see it's gone and you can see the one in the back. But remember, hit flip an invert mask and she's back, OK? And then we're gonna click into this window right here, working within the object command V to paste the grunge and I can move it, get it how I want it. And you can see the color showing through is the one that is on that compound path that we made that's in the back. So clicking out of that and moving back to the whole art board and then what I could do with this? It's select everything hit group and then I could move the whole thing around and you can see Yes, it subtracted out of that top image. But the compound path or the United path it was in the back is what showing through. So now I can create that clear phone case that I was wanting to create and have some color texture, but not have to worry about there being a background color everywhere else. On the next video, we're gonna use transparency mess again and applies them painted textures to give it that kind of painterly look see there. 5. Transparency Masks Pt. 2: in this video, we're going to continue working with transparency masks, but in a slightly different way than we did before. I'm gonna show you how to apply a painted texture to your flat vector images to give it that hand painted Look, I love illustrator. I love working an illustrator to me. It just makes a lot of sense, however, also like that hand painted look that you can achieve by fine art were through photo shop. But I want to continue where she an illustrator and I wanna have that painted Look, I guess I want to have my cake and eat it too, so to speak. So I'm gonna show you how to also have your cake and eat it too. So I'm actually gonna get started here by showing you how this method works. Adjust on her shirt. So I am going to make a copy of it and put it over here and then come over to my painted textures document. I created some textures, and I will post a link to it if you were interested in purchasing these textures for yourself. Um, but I'm gonna grab one of these and bring it over into my documents on just play with its right, getting it kind of how I think I want it rotated, resize it all that stuff, and I'm actually going to make it the same color as the shirt, which now it looks really confusing that I am going to show you how to use the transparency mask for this. I'm come over here to my Transparency window and click on a blending mode called Multiply, and you can see now that there is a subtle difference. Like if you look really closely, there is a subtle difference that has happened now because of this blending mode, and there are different ones. There's color burn and dark in, and so you can kind of play through and see which ones you know you prefer that I'm gonna use Multiply for this, and then you can adjust the opacity, you know, bring it down. If that's not enough for you, bring it back up. I kind of like it somewhere in that range. I think it looks good because I have enough of the difference there. That kind of gives it that look of of a paint brush. You know you have some shadows in there, and then I'm gonna click out of it, OK? And now, using the clipping mask method from the first video, I'm gonna get rid of all of these bits on the outside. So I'm going to grab my shirt, it command to see a copy, command f to paste in front and then shift command right bracket to bring it all the way to the front. Select everything. Hit command seven. Or you can also come up. Teoh object and hit, clipping, mask make. But command seven is really easy for me to remember, So I usually just use that. And now you have a kind of hand painted look to your shirt here. And so you can use this method on every single object just like that and have you know, different texture for her shirt, different texture for her skin. All that good suss. I'm gonna speed things up now and apply texture to some of the other objects in my group here on then give you a final product. Okay, so you kind of get the ideas. You can apply this method, this transparency mask method to all the different objects within your grouping, um, within your image to kind of give it that hand painted look, you don't have to apply to everything if you don't want to, you can kind of mix the flat with the textured or you can I mean everything and got a sex. Sure. So it's really just up to you how you want to use it. I hope that this has been super helpful for you, and I can't wait to see what you create using it.