- [Instructor] In this movie,
we'll begin filling in our artwork with color,
and I'll show you how roughly and quickly you can do it
thanks to our ability to refine the results after the fact,
using the Eraser Tool.
Alright, so I'll go ahead
and switch over to my artwork so far,
and I'll select the Blob Brush Tool.
And then I'll go up to the Stroke option,
the 2nd color swatch up here in the control panel,
and I'll change it to the slight shade of orange,
R=251, G=176, B=59.
Alright, now I'll press the Escape key
in order to hide that panel,
and I could just start painting
with my tiny little brush here,
which is great for the outlines,
but it's not so great for painting in large areas of color,
which is why it's so great
that you can modify the size of your brush on the fly
using the square bracket keys,
that are just to the right of the P as in Paul key
on an American keyboard.
If you want to increase the size of your brush,
you can press the ] Key,
if you want to increase its size more quickly,
just press and hold the ] Key like so.
If you want to decrease the size of your brush,
you can press the [ Key,
or to move quickly, press and hold that key
as you see me doing here.
Alright, now I'm just going to go ahead
and roughly paint over this guy's face,
and I really want to cover everything
but the eyelids with color,
and as you can see here,
I'm doing a pretty rotten job,
but it's going to work out just fine.
And so I'll just kind of scrub back and forth here
a little bit,
scrub around the eye as well.
And I want you to notice, that so far,
this is a standard Path outline,
and it should remain a standard Path
throughout your painting experience here.
But if I were to go around
and connect back with the beginning of my brush stroke,
I'm going to see the words Compound Path,
over here on the far left side of the control panel,
and that's because I have this interior shape
that's cutting a hole in the one outside of it.
And so to return to a standard Path outline,
I'm just going to increase the size of my brush like crazy,
and I'm going to paint around this area.
I still have a hole,
so I'm still seeing the words Compound Path
on the far left side of the control panel.
So now I'll press and hold the [ Key
to reduce the size of my brush,
and I'll paint in there,
and as soon as I get rid of the hole,
I should see Illustrator return to the word Path
to tell me that I no longer have any holes
in my Path outline.
Alright, now I'm going to reduce the size of my cursor
and paint in this area,
and I also want to paint inside of the neck,
so I'll just go ahead and whip that stuff in there like so,
and then paint back and forth
to make sure that I don't have any holes.
Oh, and I missed the ear,
so I'll just go ahead and paint inside of the ear as well,
so we want everything about the face
except for the eyelids to be painted orange.
Now notice, your results are going to vary,
but I'm now seeing the word Group
on the far left side of the control panel.
We don't really want that,
so to get rid of that, go to the Object menu,
and choose Ungroup,
or you've got the keyboard shortcut
of Control + Shift + G, or Command + Shift + G on the Mac.
And then, switch to the Black Arrow Tool
by pressing the V key,
and go ahead and Shift-click
on this big Path outline to deselect it,
and you'll see the culprit.
This little guy here
somehow got disassociated with the other Path,
and so just press the Backspace key,
or the Delete key on the Mac
to get rid of it.
Alright, now I'll go ahead and click on the Path outline
to select it,
and notice now it reads Compound Path,
which means that there's some kind of tiny little hole
inside of it,
and so to get rid of it,
right-click on the Path,
and choose Release Compound Path,
that's the easiest way to work,
and then I'll go ahead and Shift-click
on the big orange Path to deselect it,
and now I'm down to No Selection.
You can see the words No Selection
up here in the control panel,
which means we now have the standard Path outline.
Alright so I'll go ahead and click on it
to select it again,
and then I'll right-click and choose a range
and then choose Send to Back,
in order to send that shape in back of the black outlines.
Alright, now you can see
that I've gone outside the lines quite a few times,
especially up here in the eyes,
so I'm going to go ahead and zoom in
by Control + Spacebar,
or Command + Spacebar-clicking on the Mac,
and now I'll select the Eraser tool,
which is located two tools down from the Blob Brush
in the single column toolbox.
And now notice,
if I start painting,
I'm seeing myself paint through both the orange shape
as well as the black outlines,
but as soon as you release,
you'll see that the black outlines are fine,
and all you've done is erase the orange.
And the reason for that
is that the Eraser tool
requires a Path outline to be selected
in order for it to do anything.
So if I were to paint up here back and forth,
it looks like I'm painting away those black outlines,
but as soon as I release,
you can see they're just fine.
So again, you can only erase selected things
with the Eraser Tool.
Alright, I'm going to paint over this another time there
in order to do a little better job,
and I'm going to paint down in this region as well
in order to erase that stuff away,
and now I'll just paint down the outside of this guy's neck,
and then I'll paint over here just to be safe.
Now notice in this case,
we've got a little bit of an edge here
that didn't get painted in,
and so I'll go ahead and switch back to my Blob Brush Tool.
You can see that the fill color is orange, no stroke,
that's going to work out just fine,
at which point I'll go ahead and paint that region in.
The problem is it didn't join
and that's because the shape is in the background.
And so Illustrator
cannot paint to a background shape by default,
and so what you have to do is press the V key
to switch back to the Black Arrow tool,
go ahead and Shift-click on the big shape to select it,
and then switch once again to the Shape Builder Tool,
and go ahead and drag over these three regions like so
in order to merge them all together.
That also brings them to front,
so you've got to press the V key
to switch back to the Black Arrow,
right-click, choose Arrange,
and then choose Send to Back,
to once again move that shape to the back of the stack.
Alright now I'm going to switch back to my Eraser Tool,
and I'm going to go ahead and paint down like so.
Of course, you're going to find different errors
in your artwork than I'm finding in mine,
or you may not find that many errors
because you may have been a lot more careful than I was.
Alright, but throughout,
you want to make sure that you're not seeing anything
but the word Path up here in the control panel.
For example, if I were to paint like that,
I'd paint a hole into my Path outline,
and as a result I would see the words Compound Path
which I don't want,
so I'll just go ahead and press Control + Z
or Command + Z on the Mac to undo that change,
and now I'll just paint away
these final mistakes up here toward the top of the head,
and we end up with a nice orange fill
that never exceeds the outlines,
after which point,
I'll just go ahead and press the V key
to switch back to the Black Arrow tool,
and I'll click off my artwork to deselect it.
And that's how you paint in a colorful fill
as well as erase away any mistakes
using the combined abilities of the Blob Brush
and the Eraser Tool here inside Illustrator.