Interlocking shapes with clipping mask and stroke

Question

I'm trying to create something like this:

(Ignore the gray diagonal line)

I have the female symbol and the rainbow flag. I know how to add stroke, create clipping masks, and create interlocking solid-color shapes with the live paint bucket, but I can't put everything together to make this design. The logical way, I think, would be to "bring forward" or "send backward" a part of a shape by selecting nodes, but I don't think that's possible. How should I go about doing this?

Answer 1

First, create a Gradient:

You can get hard edges in a gradient by placing color stops at the same location. For example, above there is a red and an orange color stop both at 15%, then an orange and a yellow color stop both at 30%, then repeated for yellow/green, green/blue, blue/purple.

Then, draw one shape. Duplicate and move it. Use the Shape Builder Tool to drag across areas that need to appear on top... and lastly apply the gradient you just made.

_{(Final colors here are a bit muddy due to gif dithering.)}

---

If you must use a Clipping Mask, the overall construction is the same.. duplicate shape and use the Shape Builder Tool.

Then..

• Copy both shapes.
• Move your image to be clipped into place and behind the shapes
• Select the image and first shape and choose Object > Clipping Mask > Make
• Repeat for the second shape

Now if you want a stroke on all of it, adding strokes to clipping masks can be problematic. it is often best to replicate the mask path to add the stroke. To do this.... since I copied the shapes already and they are on the clipboard.

• Choose Edit > Paste in Front. This will paste the shapes I copied exactly in the same position where they were copied, but on the top of the object stack.

From here, it's just a matter of removing the fill and adjusting the stroke.

So this builds 2 clipping mask shapes, then 2 additional shapes on top for the strokes.

When it's all aligned things look as they should...

Just select all and Object > Group to keep it all together.