Geckos — and Using Clipping Masks in Illustrator

Another week, another Spoonflower fabric design contest.  The theme for this contest is Australian Animals.  So many great options it was hard to pick — kangaroos, wombats, koala bears, emu, platypus, Tasmanian devils…  I googled Australian art and was inspired by the Aboriginal dot paintings.  I thought I’d try a modern take on the dot paintings using kangaroos and geckos.

I’ll go through the technique I used in Adobe Illustrator to create the multicolored animals. gecko-outlines

I started by drawing outlines of a gecko and a kangaroo.  I wanted to keep the outlines pretty simple since there would be a lot of detail inside each animal.

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