Notice in the middle image that when I move the Live Paint Bucket over the left wing, Illustrator highlights the area of the wing surrounding the two spots, allowing me to paint the main part of the wing without also coloring in the two spots. On the left is the butterfly before painting. He simple butterfly shown in Figure 9 using compound shapes now I’m ready to color it using Live Paint.
Within a Live Paint Group, everything is treated as if it’s at the same level. That’s because one of the rules that falls by the wayside when you’re working with a Live Paint Group is the idea of stacking order. When you’re working in a Live Paint Group, it might be helpful to imagine that you’ve taken a trip into Flatland. Right: After painting the strokes on all three sides of the triangle.Ī Visit to Flatland: Working with Live Paint Groups Some of you may be familiar with the Victorian satire Flatland, Edwin Abbott’s fanciful story set in a totally flat world populated by intelligent squares, triangles, lines, and other two-dimensional shapes. Middle: When the cursor is positioned to paint the stroke, note that the cursor changes from a bucket to a little paintbrush, in addition to highlighting the stroke.
In Figure 3, you’ll Kevan’s original scanned drawing on the left in the middle is the tracing Kevan made with Live Trace and on the right is the final version after Kevan colored it with Live Paint.įigure 8: Left: The Live Paint Bucket is positioned to paint the fill. That’s what artist and illustrator Kevan Atteberry did. For example, you can draw a sketch on paper, scan it, trace the scan using Live Trace, and then color the tracing object that results using the Live Paint Bucket. Using Live Paint, you can easily color the artwork you’ve traced, without worrying about the fact that your tracing object isn’t composed of separate vector objects. Live Trace and Live Paint: A Perfect Pair One of the best things about Live Paint is that it’s designed to work hand in hand with another new tool in Illustrator CS2, Live Trace.
#PAINT BUCKET TOOL ILLUSTRATOR HOW TO#
I’ll show you exactly how to do that in a bit. Suddenly, you can paint any enclosed area you want, whether or not it’s a discrete vector object. To change the rules, just designate the objects you want to paint as a Live Paint Group. Suppose you draw three squares, arranged so that the space between them forms a triangle, as you see in Figure 1:įigure 2: Live Paint allowed me to color the triangular space green - even though technically there’s no object there to color! Painting the Intuitive Way Let’s look at an example of how Live Paint lets you break the rules. This article will introduce you to the ins and outs of working with Live Paint, and show you just how much fun you can have with that shiny new Live Paint Bucket. That lets you paint shapes and spaces the way your eye sees them - just as you would if you were coloring a drawing or painting by hand. With Live Paint, you can instantly apply color, gradients, and other fills to any enclosed space in your artwork, without having to make sure it’s defined as a separate vector object first.
#PAINT BUCKET TOOL ILLUSTRATOR FREE#
That’s what’s so fun about Illustrator CS2’s new Live Paint function: It sets you free to color your artwork intuitively and impulsively. It isn’t often in life that you find yourself being encouraged to break the rules - to forget about limitations imposed on you in the past and do things your own way.