Adobe Illustrator CS4 - Manual (Page 160)

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Chapter 6: Painting
To help you add visual interest to your artwork, Adobe Illustrator provides calligraphic, scatter, art, and pattern
brushes. In addition, you can use the Live Paint feature, to paint different path segments and fill enclosed paths with
different colors, patterns, or gradients. Using opacity, masks, gradients, blends, meshes, and patterns provides limitless
opportunities for creativity.
Painting with fills and strokes
Painting methods
Illustrator provides two methods of painting: assigning a fill, stroke, or both to an entire object, and converting the
object to a Live Paint group and assigning fills or strokes to the separate edges and faces of paths within it.
Paint an object
After you draw an object, you assign a fill, stroke, or both to it. You can then draw other objects that you can paint
similarly, layering each new object on top of the previous ones. The result is something like a collage made out of
shapes cut from colored paper, with the look of the artwork depending on which objects are on top in the stack of
layered objects.
For a video on using brushes, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0044 .
Paint a Live Paint group
With the Live Paint method, you paint more like you would with a traditional coloring tool, without regard to layers
or stacking order, which can make for a more natural workflow. All objects in a Live Paint group are treated as if they
are part of the same flat surface. This means you can draw several paths and then color separately each area enclosed
by these paths (called a face). You can also assign different stroke colors and weights to portions of a path between
intersections (called an edge). The result is that, much like a coloring book, you can fill each face and stroke each edge
with a different color. As you move and reshape paths in a Live Paint group, the faces and edges automatically adjust
in response.
An object consisting of a single path painted with the existing method has a single fill and a single stroke (left). The same object converted to a
Live Paint group can be painted with a different fill for each face and a different stroke for each edge (right).