Final Product What You'll Be Creating In this tutorial you will
learn how to create all-purpose water drop using the Clipping
Mask and gradient fills. Water drops created in this way can be
placed on any texture, both vector and raster, and the texture
under the drop will look enlarged – just like a real drop of
water. Creating the drop only takes a few minutes but adds a
level of detail to your illustration that looks great. Let’s
start our tutorial creating a grass blade. Take the Pen Tool (P)
and create a closed path, similar to one shown in the figure
below. Create a rectangle using the Rectangle Tool (M) and
rotate it so that it is placed along the grass blade. The
rectangle should be placed in the underlayer below the shape,
while the grass blade path should not cross the rectangle
boundaries. Keep the rectangle selected, go to Object > Create
Gradient Mesh, and set the values shown in the figure below.
Select the rectangle and grass blade and go to Object > Clipping
Mask > Make. Now proceed to the grad