GUIDE: MASKING - SEASONS POSTER

In Adobe Illustrator, masking is a powerful technique used to hide or reveal portions of an object or group. It involves combining two or more objects, where one object serves as a mask to control the visibility of the other object(s). Masks are useful for creating complex designs, applying textures, and controlling the visibility of specific elements within your artwork.

Seasons Masking

The main tool to create a mask that we will be using is transparency. You can find it under the window tab and just leave it open for the duration of this project.

1.Go to a stock image source (Pexels.com) and choose 2 images that represent a season. Pick pictures that have high contrast between each other. For example for Spring choose one image that green is the dominate color and the other image be mostly pink or purple.

2. Crop the images to fit your artboards and have them layered on top of each other. The image you have on top is the one that will be used for the mask.

3. With a white fill on your text type out the season and have it fill your entire image. The white is what is actually used to create the masks shape so what ever is not white in the clipping mask will not show up.

4. With the transparency window up cut (ctrl+x) the text away

5. Click on the top image. It should show up as the left box under transparency.

6. Click on the right box and paste in place (ctrl+shift+v) to create the mask using the text that you cut. You are now on the clipping mask layer so be sure to click on the image in the left box to go back to your normal layers.

7. If you want to outline your text so that it pops out a little more hit paste in place (ctrl+shift+v) again and you will have your white text pasted where it was before. Change the fill to none and adjust the stroke and opacity to what you like.

Completed Example

For Spring and Summer I used two images with contrasting colors to make the words pop out by using the mask. For Fall I used the the same image twice but the masked image I changed to greyscale. For winter I used the same image twice again but I layered over an opaque blue rectangle. There are countless ways to use a mask and these are just a few examples on how. Using a mask is also how you create textures over an image.

There are countless downloadable textures packs that can be used for masks that can give your work different looks like distressed or make it seem like it is made of a different material.

Example Discussion

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