Beginner needs help making a multi-color sphere!

Question

Hello all,
I am an Illustrator CS3 newbie and I have run into a hurdle. I am trying to make a blue sphere with ONE gray quadrant. That is, 3/4 of the sphere looks blue, but the upper right 1/4 looks gray.
I can make a fine looking blue sphere by placing a small light blue circle inside a larger dark blue circle, and doing a Blend. I tried to place a gray rectangle over that blended sphere and do a Pathfinder Divide, but the blended sphere doesn't want to accept my Divide.
When I try doing the Pathfinder Divide first, I get a 2D circle with the right color scheme (3/4 blue and 1/4 gray) but when I go to blend a smaller circle into that to attempt to make a 3D sphere effect, it goes all screwy.
Help me, Illustrator veterans! What is the right way to make a blue sphere with a gray quadrant???

Answer 1

1. Turn on Smart Guides.
2. Ellipse Tool: Shift Drag to draw a circle.
3. Attributes Palette: Turn on the Show Center icon.
4. Deselect.
5. White Pointer: Select the upper right segment of the circle. Click the segment, not an anchorPoint. Edit>Cut. Edit>PasteInFront. You now have two paths.
6. Pen Tool: Click the upper anchorPoint of the single-segment path you just pasted. Move the Pen cursor downward until SmartGuides senses the center. Click. Move the Pen cursor rightward and click the other endpoint of the path. The path is closed. You now have two paths: one open, one closed. Select both paths.
7. Gradient Palette: Click the Gradient icon. Set it to Radial. Each of the two paths now has a gray radial grad fill. Leave both paths selected.
8. Gradient Tool: Mousedown in the midde of the smaller path, drag diagonally leftward and downward, crossing the center and a little beyond. The figure should look fairly like a sphere, with the highlight in the upper right. It appears that one continuous Grad Fill spans both objects, but in fact, each still has its own fill. Deselect. Select the larger path (the part you want to be blue).
9. Gradient Palette: Edit the colors of the two color stops, making the white one light blue and the black one dark blue.
10. Set stroke to None on both paths.
JET