Adobe Illustrator Tutorials - lesson 2

Lesson two

Filling and Stroking

Objective: explore the options for setting fills and strokes for objects, lines and text.

Exercise 1 - Basic Fills

1. Draw an object using the  Bezier Pen tool, as you did in the last lesson. Remember to close the path.
2. Press Control-I to bring up the Paint Styles palette. Make sure that "Auto" is checked in the palette's lower-right corner.  
3. Making sure your object is selected (Control-click on it if no blue dots are visible), choose a fill color from the Paint Styles palette. The object should display the new paint style you've just selected. (If not, click the box in Paint Styles labeled Fill, and try choosing a color again. Note that you can shift-click several objects and fill them all at once this way.

Exercise 2 - Adding a Stroke

After an object is drawn and filled, you can add a stroke (with your choice of line width).

Note that you must click on the Stroke box in the upper left corner before you can add a stroke to your object(s). You can enter any positive number you like into the Stroke Weight area (lower right). Here, we’ve applied a 10 point black stroke.

The important thing to understand is that strokes are drawn from the center out. In other words, a 12 point stroke would extend 6 points outward, and 6 points inward. This can (and does!) make heavily-stroked text look very strange. Let's see what it looks like, and how to fix it.

1. Select the Text Tool , click on your page (DON'T click and drag) and type a word. You can use the Type menu to set the size (Make it large enough to fit comfortably on your screen). The Font menu will change typefaces. Here, We’ve used 48-point Chicago.  
2. Using the  solid arrow ("Object Select") tool, click on the text object so that you can see a blue underline with a blue square dot at the end.
3. Near the bottom of the Text menu is a "Convert to Outlines" option. Select it. (The text should become covered with many blue dots.)  
4. Now, open the Paint Styles dialog if it is not already open (Control-I). Choose a color for the fill and another (different) color for the stroke. Make the stroke 6 points wide. Notice the ugly effect as described above.  
5. Here's how to fix it: In the Edit menu is the Copy command.

Choose it, then choose Paste In Front, also in that menu.

This will paste a copy of the text directly on top of the original. In the Paint Styles palette, set the stroke to be [/] (the topleft color is a box with a slash through it, symbolizing "none.") Note that our 6-point stroke is now only 3 points wide, as half has been covered up by the unstroked copy.

In this example, the pasted-in-front copy of the lettering has no stroke and a yellow fill. The Red outline is the stroke on the copy behind it.

Exercise 3

More fancy tricks are possible with text that has been converted to outlines, too.

1. Make sure your text has been converted to outlines and is selected.
2. From the Paint Styles Palette, choose the red-to-yellow gradient fill.  
3. notice that each letter has its own red-to-yellow fill? Choose Compound Path:Make from the Object menu.  
4. Note that Make Compound made the entire range of objects act like one object, with a single fill? Now, we can use the Gradient tool (the diagonal gray bar in the Toolbox) to change the angle of the fill. Click and drag to set the length and direction.

Imagine putting a 2-point white outline around the pasted-in-front text, and then pasting yet another copy in front and setting its stroke to “none.” This produces an “inline” effect – very snazzy!

Exercise 4

Did we say fancy tricks? You ain't seen nothin' yet....

Now that the text has been converted to outlines (see Exercise 2), you can alter the shapes of the individual letters. This procedure works for any drawn object (not just outline text), by the way.

1. IMPORTANT: you MUST use the  hollow arrow tool to be able to edit object shapes.
2. There are two easy ways to select points on a shape to edit:

• drag a selection rectangle around the point(s) you want to edit, or
• Shift-click directly on the point you want to edit.

You can tell an object's shape is ready to be edited when "handles" appear on each side of a point on a curve and/or the point turns "hollow."

Try it now, on the text you typed and converted to outlines in the last exercise.

To create the example below, use method (a) as follows:

1. First, drag a selection rectangle so that it surrounds the top of the letter “I”.
2. Then, grab one of the solid blue points that appears and pull it up, stretching the top of the letter.
3. Drag another selection rectangle, but this time around only the top-left corner of the letter “I”. Pull it to the left a bit.
4. To draw the “paintbrush,” use the  freehand drawing tool and draw, remembering to always close the path by finishing your shape at the same place you started it.

Editing a shape selected with the hollow arrow tool can be done by dragging the point with the mouse, using the cursor keys, or even dragging the curve or line that lies between selected points.

Try each of these techniques now.

DOs

• Do create objects with as few points as possible
• Do save your work often
• Do try to use keyboard shortcuts whenever possible

Important keyboard shortcuts:

• Control: makes any tool temporarily become the arrow tool(s)
• Control-Tab: Pressing tab toggles between solid (object select) and hollow (point select) arrows. Try it now.
• Control-i: Paint Styles
• Control-spacebar: zoom in
• Control-Alt-spacebar: zoom out

DON'Ts

• Don't create stray points, or leave little "garbage" objects lying around. Select them and press DELETE to delete them.
• Don't forget to close all shapes. Remember to look for the "o" symbol that appears next to the Pen tool. It tells you when you are about to properly close a shape.
• Don't try to blend objects or text filled with a gradient -- it doesn't work!
• Don't worry too much if you have trouble taming those Bezier curves -- they take practice!