In this movie we're going to take these concentric rings, and we're going to paste them inside the heart shape. I've saved my progress as The target.ai, and I'm going to switch to the Black Arrow tool, which I can get by pressing the V key, and then I'll go ahead and click on any of the rings to select all of them. Now let's go up to the Edit menu and choose the Cut command, or you can press Ctrl+X, or Command+X on the Mac. Now I'll go ahead and click on the heart to select it. What we're going to be creating here is a mask, so in another words, the heart will be masking the rings, and we do that by forcing the rings inside the heart.
So if you drop down to the bottom of the toolbox, you'll notice these icons that say draw Something. So we've got Draw Normal, which is the way things are setup normally inside of the software, and the idea is you just go ahead and draw one shape on top of the one before, so each path is stacked on the next one. If you want to change that so you draw a shape behind the active shape, then you turn on Draw Behind, and then if you want to put one shape inside of another, you switch to Draw Inside, and you can draw shapes directly inside each other if you want to, or you can paste them.
Notice that you can switch between these modes by pressing Shift+D, the D being for Draw of course, but I'm just going to go ahead and click on Drawn Inside in order to make it active, and you can see that now we have these dashed corners rounding the shape. Now all you need to do is go up to the Edit menu and choose Paste in Place and that goes ahead and puts the rings inside the heart. Now I want to show you what's going on over here inside the Layers panel and if you can't see the Layers panel, you go up to the Window menu and choose the layers Command, you also have keyboard shortcut of F7.
Notice that each one of these layers here has a little triangle in front of it and if you click on that triangle, you'll expand the contents of the layer, because the angle of the triangle changes, some folks say that you're twirling open the layer. I'm going to expand my Layers panel a little bit. Directly below you can see that we have this thing called a clip group, which is actually short for clipping group, for what that's worth, and you can twirl it open as well, and it contains the path outline, which is the mask, by the way, and the target inside of it, which is a group.
And we can go ahead and twirl that item open as well if we want to see the contents of the group. Actually, we don't really need a group for single item like this so you can just drag the item out of the group, like so, by dragging it upward just a little bit of housekeeping, you don't have to do, because the group is not hurting anything. But the point I'm kind of trying to make here is that the Layers panel inside of Illustrator is amazingly powerful, you can see every single item in your entire Illustration, and you can name the items too, like if I were to double-click on the existing name.
Notice it doesn't bring up a dialog box like it has in the past, we have direct access to the name, and I'm going go ahead and call this guy target, and then I'll double-click at the name of the heart above, and I'll go ahead and call it outline, and then I'll double-click on clip group here, and I'll just call it heart, and so you have this amazing level of controls if you want to organize your artwork. Now you may look at this and think, well, that's for people who have a great time organizing their sock drawer or something like that, but it actually can be very useful, especially if you're sharing files with other people, if the files are sufficiently complicated, they'll really be glad that you took the time to name a few things, and it's often times very helpful for your own purposes.
If you find yourself working in an Illustration you created a couple of years ago, you too will be grateful that you took the time to name a few things. All right, now I'm just going to click off the object in order to deselect it, and I'll switch back to the Draw Normal mode and the result is a target successfully pasted inside the heart. In the next movie, we're going to begin work on the arrow.
Author
Released
6/1/2012This installment covers subjects such as working with shapes and closed paths, including painting, grouping, and coloring, and placing and adjusting type. Deke shows you how to select fonts, create hanging indents, and tweak the kerning and leading of your text. Additional chapters cover drawing and editing paths (and their points) and moving and transforming objects in your artwork.
- Rotating and duplicating objects
- Grouping and stacking
- Erasing and painting selected paths
- Using the Shape Builder tool
- Reflecting across an angled axis
- Simulating beveled edges
- Creating a network of interlocking paths
- Placing and flowing text
- Creating page margins
- Adjusting type size
- Creating and applying paragraph styles
- Using the Glyphs panel
- Inserting and removing anchor points
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
Views
Q: I'm following along with Chapter 5 movie, "Creating compound paths." Why can't I get the second shape to compound properly? The Object menu doesn't seem to work.
A: This problem is due to a bug in Illustrator that has developed since this movie was recorded. To work around it, click off the Object menu (or press the Escape key); take another action, such as opening and closing the drawing layer; and revisit the Object menu.
Related Courses
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Deke's Techniques
with Deke McClelland155h 5m Intermediate
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Introduction
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Welcome to One-on-One2m 13s
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1. Making a Document
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Creating a new document4m 50s
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Advanced document controls4m 43s
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Modifying your document3m 6s
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Saving changes6m 4s
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2. Working with Artboards
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Auto-arranging artboards3m 25s
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Artboards and rulers4m 35s
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3. Getting Around
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Panels and workspaces5m 17s
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Cycling through screen modes3m 25s
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4. Making Line Art
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Meet the line tools2m 8s
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Creating custom guides4m 13s
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Adjusting control handles4m 35s
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Using the Spiral tool3m 29s
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Tracing existing spirals5m 2s
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Now, we draw39s
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5. Drawing Geometric Shapes
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Meet the shape tools2m 8s
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Using the Ellipse tool6m 33s
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Creating compound paths7m 5s
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Drawing a multi-point star7m 28s
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Drawing rounded rectangles7m 35s
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Reflecting across an axis5m 29s
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Using the Flare tool6m 25s
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6. Tracing an Image
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Opening an image to embed it3m 49s
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Auto-tracing and resolution5m 48s
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Adjusting layer previews3m 3s
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Flipping and fusing shapes5m 54s
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7. Scaling and Rotating
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Creating a tracing template4m 50s
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Dragging and duplicating2m 55s
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Using the Scale tool6m 50s
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Using the Rotate tool5m 6s
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Rotating and duplicating5m 52s
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The realm of transformations1m 24s
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8. Painting Freeform Shapes
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Using the Shape Builder tool6m 16s
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Simulating beveled edges7m 34s
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The best tools for painting1m 12s
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9. Working with Type
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Creating page margins6m 1s
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Placing and flowing text5m 39s
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Working with point text4m 53s
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Redefining paragraph styles6m 16s
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Using the Glyphs panel8m 37s
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Spell-checking your text4m 41s
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10. Using the Pen Tool
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Faking simple spline curves6m 49s
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Conclusion
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See ya46s
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Video: Pasting one shape inside another