How to delete everything under selection on lower layer

[Allan15C3]

Hello,

I'm wondering if I can get some advise please as I'm struggling, let me explain.....

This picture shows 2 layers.

Layer 1 = Lady

Layer 2 = Wall

What I'm ultimately wanting to do, is to print out, just an outline, so no fills anywhere.

When I remove the fill on the lady, I can now see the wall again through her outline, makes sense ofcourse

At the moment, I'm just using the erasor tool to delete the parts of the wall that show through the lady.

I'm just asking if anyone can tell me if there is an easier way to do this. Is there anyway, I can just select the lady, and then say "delete everything on the layer below her".

Sorry if this is a silly question, but I only know the most basic about Illustrator and I'm worried I'm missing something obvious here.

Thank You

[Jacob Bugge]

Allan,

Instead of just removing the fill on the lady, you can remove the fill on the wall and then:

1) Copy the lady behind herself (Ctrl/Cmd+C+B), then remove the stroke, then select both the filled lady and the wall, then in the Transparency panel click Make (Opacity) Mask;

2) Remove the fill from the copy of the lady first made in 1).

With 1) the black filled lady will be used to knock out the part of the wall behind her (and thereby become invsisible), and with 2) the stroked lady will appear before the wall.

This is reversible: you can always release the Mask and start over.

In 1) you can keep the stroke, but it is safer to have the overlap between her stroke and the stroke on the wall to ensure against (anti aliasing) gaps.

[Allan15C3]

Thank you Jacob very much for your help, your input is much appreicated.

[Jacob Bugge]

For my part you are welcome, Allan.

Illy (job description Adobe Illustrator) can often help us in different ways, and it can be good to try out different ones, also to get to know them.

You can also use Draw Inside with just the stroked paths, starting with the lady,

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/how-to/draw-content-behind-and-inside.html

[Ares Hovhannesyan]

You can use pathfinder option and then outline your object from Effect->Path 

How to combine objects in Illustrator (adobe.com)

[Allan15C3]

Thank you Ares for your help, much appreciated.