- In this movie I'll show you how to modify
the behavior of the blob brush,
so that you can paint shapes in back of other shapes.
I'm going to start things off by selecting the blob brush,
which I can now get by pressing the b key.
And I'm going to change either the filler stroke color,
doesn't matter, to this darker shade of orange
R241 G90 B36.
And then I'll press the escape key to hide that panel.
And I'm going to go ahead and zoom in on the eyelids
like so, and then I'll press and hold the left bracket key
in order to reduce the size of my cursor.
And I'll go ahead and paint inside each of the eyelids.
And I'm going to scrub back and forth here
to make sure that I fill in these shapes
so that I see the word path on the far left side
of the control panel.
And now I'll just go ahead and paint this guy like so,
in order to fill it in as well.
And now that I've painted both those eyelids,
I'll press the v key to switch to my black arrow tool.
I'll shift click on the left hand eyelid shape
and I'll right click inside the document,
choose Arrange, and then choose Send To Back.
Which works just fine but there are times
where it would be nice to be able to paint those shapes
in the background.
As opposed to finishing them off in the foreground
and then moving them backwards.
And so for example, I'm going to paint
in these colors right here by first,
going up to the select menu
and choosing the Deselect command.
Or you can press control shift a,
or command shift a on the Mac.
And that way when I change the fill color,
I wont affect the existing shapes.
Which I'm going to do by clicking on this first color swatch
up here in the control panel.
And then I'm going to select this shade of pink right here.
R237 G30 B121.
And now I'll switch back to my blob brush,
and let's say I paint like so.
In other words, I didn't quite fill everything
in right here.
And then I right click on the shape, choose Arrange,
and once again choose Send To Back
in order to move that shape to the back of the stack.
Well if I now try to fill that area in,
then it creates a separate shape which means
I then have to press the v key to switch
to my black arrow tool,
shift click on this shape to select it,
and then switch to the shape builder tool
which I can now get by pressing the l key
and drag across all three of those shapes like so.
Which brings them back to the front of the stack
at which point I have to right click again, choose Arrange,
and then choose Send To Back
in order to move them backward.
Which is obviously a pain in the neck.
So what is the solution?
Well let's say I do something similar here,
I'll go ahead and select my blob brush tool again
and I'll go ahead and paint around this region.
And I might possibly make my brush larger
by pressing and holding the right bracket key.
And then I'll just go ahead and paint upward like so,
but again let's say I miss a tiny area.
So I right click on the object, choose Arrange,
and choose Send To Back.
Well the other options that's available to you
is with the blob brush tool selected,
go ahead and press the enter key or the return key on a Mac
in order to bring up the options dialog box.
And then turn on merge only with selection,
which gives you way more control over the process.
And then click OK.
And from now on you can only paint selected path outlines
whether they're in the background or not.
And you do so by dragging on that path,
and notice you can still paint on it
even though it's behind the other paths.
Which means that you have the option of doing this.
I'll go ahead and press control shift a,
or command shift a on a Mac to deselect my artwork.
And I'll go ahead and switch to this
shade of purple right here,
R147 G39 B143.
And I'll increase the size of my brush
by pressing and holding the right bracket key.
And I will paint downward like so.
And then I'll right click on the path, choose Arrange,
and choose Send To Back.
And now I'll just continue to paint
on that background shape.
Which is way more convenient as you can see.
And now I'll reduce the size of my brush
by pressing and holding the left bracket key.
And then I'll just go ahead and paint
in this region as well.
And so it just gives you that flexibility
to paint in the foreground or the background,
whichever you like.
Alright so I'm going to go ahead and paint over here,
right click, choose Arrange, choose Send To Back.
You've also got a keyboard shortcut
of control shift left bracket,
or command shift left bracket on the Mac
if you care to remember that one.
And now I'm going to paint from up here
and as soon as I hit this other path,
everything goes into the background like so.
Alright now I'll just go ahead and complete
this path here,
by filling it all the way in
down to the bottom of that bleed border.
And sure enough I have a standard path
with no hole in it,
as witnessed by the word path over here
in the far left side of the control panel.
And now I'll just go ahead and press control 0
or command 0 on the Mac,
to center my zoom.
And I'll press control shift a or command shift a on the Mac
to deselect my artwork.
And that's how you paint path outlines
that are set in back of other path outlines,
by setting the shape builder tools so that it merges
only with selected path outlines
here inside Illustrator.