Here is a very quick way  to create fluffy clouds in Illustrator - from scratch. It’s really easy  to accomplish this and they fit perfectly in any colorful nature theme  artwork you might create.

Difficulty: Beginner
Tools: Adobe  Illustrator (CS3 - works with earlier versions too)
Completion time: 2  minutes

STEP 1

Create a document of  600x600 px in RGB color mode.



STEP 2

Grab the Ellipse Tool (L), hold ALT and  SHIFT keys and draw random, overlapping circles of different, random  dimensions. The only thing you should pay attention to is that you don’t  leave any blank spaces between them. I’ve drawn them in different  colors so they would be easily noticeable.



STEP 3

CTRL+click somewhere  on canvas to deselect everything. Now go to the gradients window (Window  > Gradients) and click-drag a white color from the Swatches palette  (Window > Swatches) on the left side of the gradient bar.


STEP 4

Double-click the  Foreground color and pick a bright teal color. Hit OK, click the small  icon shown below, then click-drag it on the right side of the gradient  bar.


STEP 5

click-drag the  gradient into the Swatches palette.



STEP 6

Select all artwork  (CTRL+A) and click the gradient you just created and set Angle to “-90”.



STEP 7

Go to Window >  Symbols to bring up the Symbols palette, Then click-drag all artwork  into the Symbols palette. Name it “Clouds” and hit OK.



Done!

Here’s an example of  how to use them.



Now you have a really  nice element to place in background and you can access it any time you  want.