Illustrator Tutorial: Creating a Cloud

This is a pretty simple and straight forward tutorial that doesn’t require advanced skills but you should have a basic understanding of Illustrator. I am using CS4, but this will also work in CS3.

To get started, let’s fire up Adobe Illustrator and create our document. You are free to choose your own dimensions and resolution; mine will be 800×400.

Next, go to your tools and select the pencil tool.

Draw a cloud-like shape on your stage, making it as curvy and detailed as you want. Be sure to hold down the Alt key (Mac + PC) while drawing to ensure the path is closed when you finish. After you finish drawing your cloud, add a fill which should be the same as the background that you choose (you can adjust this at any point).

Using the pencil tool again, draw another cloud shape within the existing shape. Again, hold down the ALT key (Mac+PC) and make sure the path does not overlap the existing path. Once you have finished, make the fill color white.

Once again, draw another cloud shape within the path you just created, making sure not to overlap the existing paths and holding down ALT to close the new path. Select a gray tone for for this path. Keep in mind, the darker grays will give you more of a storm cloud look while the lighter grays appear sunnier.

For the fourth time, draw another cloud shape within the previous shape and hold down ALT (Mac+PC) and do not overlap the other paths. Use a fill color or white.

Now the cloud shapes are in place, select all created layers or paths and go to the menu Object -> Blend -> Make. You should get something like this:

Nice effect, but still not there yet. Select your newly created Blend layer then go to menu Effect -> Stylize -> Feather.

Select Preview and adjust the Feather Radius to your liking. For mine, I cranked it up to about 40px. It may take a couple of minutes to render, but after you apply your feather you can always go back and adjust path fills as you see fit. Experiment with different colors or gradients to create more depth and try adding more paths and shapes.

Finally, add your background. You may need to experiment since the feather and blend skew the colors of the cloud. Here is our final cloud:

Thanks for checking out my tutorial. I hope you will find this useful. Please send me your comments and suggestions.