- In this movie,
I'll show you how to paint a few
independent paths,
and then I'll show you how to join them together.
Now, the first thing to know,
is that you can extend a path using the blob brush
whether it's selected or not.
So, for example, if I go up to the Select menu,
and choose Deselect, or press Control Shift A,
or Command Shift A on the Mac,
and then I go ahead and paint a line right there,
let's say, Illustrator goes ahead
and joins the paths together,
as we're seeing here.
And that's because I'm matching the color.
Compare that to what happens if I press
Control Shift A, or Command Shift A,
to once again deselect the path,
and I go up here to the Stroke option,
which takes precedent,
and I change its color to something else,
such as this shade of red right here,
and then I'll go ahead and press the Escape key
to hide that panel, and I'll paint around this left eye,
his right, of course, and as soon as I release
Illustrator goes ahead and switches the stroke
and fill colors and it creates an independent path outline.
And so if I go ahead and paint with that same color again,
I'm going to join this brush stroke to the eye path,
but the black paths are going to be independent.
But let's say that's not what I want,
I want to join those path outlines together,
then I press Control A, or Command A on the Mac,
to select all the paths,
and then I would drop down to the Shape Builder tool,
the one that we saw a couple of chapters ago,
and it might be tempting to press the Shift key,
and marquee all these shapes,
but if you do, you're going to fill their interiors as well,
which is not what we want.
So, I'll go ahead and press Control Z,
or Command Z on the Mac,
to undo that change,
and instead what you have to do is
very carefully drag along these path outlines like so,
and then release, and notice that I have just a little bit
of extra path right there,
so I'll go ahead and drag over this area as well,
and that will fuse everything into a single
black filled path outline.
At which point, I'll go ahead and press Control 0,
or Command 0 on the Mac, in order to zoom back out.
And I will once again select the blob brush.
Now, another way to work is to just paint
off the path outline,
so if I were to paint along the ear,
for example, and never touch that selected path,
then I'm going to begin an independent path outline
like so, and then, if I paint down here,
I will create yet another independent path,
and now I'm going to join to that one
by painting this portion of the ear.
But if I were to paint over here, along this eyelid,
then I would join back up with the big path outline.
Alright, but let's say I want to join
everything together,
then I could just paint along here,
up the cheek bone, all the way into the hair,
and then as soon as I release,
because I painted into every path outline,
I end up joining all those paths together.
Alright, now I'm going to go ahead
and finish off the hair,
and I'm going to do that in separate passes,
as you're seeing me do,
just so that I get some nice sharp corners,
I'm going to paint over here, like here,
and cheat a little into this area of the template,
because I feel like I need to have a little more room.
And, if you don't get things exactly right,
if you make an occasional mistake
by going too far, for example,
as I'm doing here,
don't worry too much about it,
we'll take care of problems like that in a future movie.
Alright, I'm just going to paint in
these details right here,
as you see me doing,
in order to finish off that hair,
and here's the big path,
the one along the jaw line here.
I've got to go very slowly,
so that I don't make a mess of things,
but if you do take things slowly enough,
you should be able to make it work pretty easily
because the tool is just so darn forgiving,
as you can see right here, it does a lot of the
smooth work for you.
Alright, now I'll paint up this little detail right here,
and I'll paint up the neck line,
and by the way, if you want to paint a perpendicular path,
then just go ahead and press the Shift key as you drag.
I don't want that, however, so I'll press Control Z,
or Command Z on the Mac to undo that change.
And then I'm going to scroll down a little bit
because I want to paint more into this neck.
I want to paint it kind a kind of collar into it.
So I'm going to paint way down here,
outside the bleed, as you can see,
that red border,
and then I'll paint along the bottom of the neck.
And I'm going to give him a left shoulder
that goes a little bit above that neck line,
and then I'll just go ahead and add
a couple of collar lines, as you see me doing here.
Alright, I'll press Control 0, or Command 0 on the Mac,
in order to once again center my zoom,
and I'll press Control Shift A,
or Command Shift A on the Mac,
in order to deselect my art work.
And that's how you paint independent path outlines,
as well as fuse those independent paths together
using the blob brush tool,
here, inside Illustrator.