How to use the Live Paint feature in Adobe Illustrator! When you have a lovely line drawing that you want to add colour behind, and you’re not getting along with the Pen tool, Live Paint is so handy to use! Fill in a drawing quickly and easily with this fab feature in Illustrator.
- Select your drawing and go to the Shape Builder tool in your toolbar, drag out the menu and select Live Paint Bucket (or K on your keyboard).
- Click somewhere near your selected drawing and you have now made a new live paint group.
- Go back to your toolbar and select the Live Paint Selection tool (or Shift+L) and click the area you want to fill.
- Select your colour with the Eyedropper tool or Color Picker, and hey presto, the area is filled with colour.
TIPS:
- Your line art will need to have clear fill areas. If lines trail off or are not joined the process will not work.
- If you have a detailed drawing it can be a lot of clicking through the toolbar so we’d recommend using the shortcuts.
We encourage you to experiment with the tool and see what you think! We’d love to see your results on socials. Tag @makeitindesign #makeitindesign.
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